Those words are "common", "fisheries" and "policy". Somehow, reports are produced about overfishing, sustainability, fishermen and their lives, the marine economy and yet, nobody mentions those three vital words. Why is that?

The BBC reports that a new report by the New Economics Foundation, which tends to be a little woolly on politics and real economics, has published a report called Lost at sea: £2.7 billion and 100,000 jobs.  It attacks overfishing, which they say is bad for the economy and criticize European fisheries ministers. Yet, they find it impossible to mention that what is behind the overfishing as well as the discards is an insane policy that has, as its basis, the notion of a common European fishing resource to which all member states can have equal access and which is regulated centrally on the basis of political decisions.

Another report produced by the International Sustainability Unit is entitled Towards Global Sustainable Fisheries and will need a closer examination, which we promise to provide. But it is not a good sign that the Executive Summary sees no need to mention those dreaded words or a few others like "third", "country" and "agreements". How can one have a serious discussion on the subject if one avoids the thorny political issues?

Spanish worry about fishermen not being able to fish in Moroccan waters after the renewal of agreement was scuppered is escalating. (Blogged here.)

The Congress of Deputies overwhelmingly passed the non-binding proposition from the Popular Parliamentary Group (GPP) requiring the urgent renovation of the fishing agreement between the European Union (EU) and Morocco.

The proposal was approved by 298 votes in favour, 28 against and 3 abstentions, EFE agency informed.

Joaquin Garcia Diez, GPP deputy, defended the initiative to prevent Spanish vessels from extended inactivity and the increase of unemployment level in populations which are highly dependent on fishing, such as the fishermen of Barbate.

In this city, 50 per cent of economic activity depends on the product of fishing in Moroccan waters, the legislator said.

For Garcia Diez, the new protocol must be supported by scientific reports and take into account the requirements of European Parliament (EP), and the opinion of the industry and the autonomous communities.

Members of the Popular Party (PP) and the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) also reached consensus on the amendments tabled by the Socialists, seeking immediate implementation of the aid fund provided for the duration of the fisheries suspension.

Jobs in the Canary Islands are also being threatened.

Having mentioned Reclaim Our Seas Alliance or ROSA again, we feel it may be necessary to give some information about this organization.

ROSA is an alliance of fishing groups from England, France, Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland united in a campaign to halt the economic and social decline suffered by fishing communities caused by the CFP.

ROSA represents a new strategic direction for fishing policy that gives Member States with an interest in a particular fisheries area the primacy of deciding the right policy for that area.

ROSA’s objectives are:

1. To halt the centralising process that has characterised EU fisheries policy through the real CFP of equal access to the resource with exclusive competence for all marine resources being with “Brussels” and

2. To initiate the process immediately of repatriating control of policy, management and stocks back to individual EU maritime Member States That is the outcome that we are looking for from the review of the EU‘s Common Fisheries Policy.

So far, that outcome appears to be unlikely and the fight must go on but it is good to know that we are not fighting alone.

We have mentioned before a certain organization that exists on the social network Facebook, called Reclaim Our Seas Alliance or ROSA. Its aim is to set up communication between various fishing groups in the relevant member states of the European Union.

ROSA TRI has been providing links to the story of the ongoing protests by Italian fishermen against fuel prices and tax increases. (As it happens, these were inevitable, given Italy's economic situation but the fishermen are a little fed up with being always on the receiving end of every new tax and regulation.) Two links are here and here though the provenance of the second link may not be to everyone's taste.

Some people might have problems with this video as well, Press TV being, notoriously, controlled by the Iranian government, but we think the content is worth watching:
 

 FAL sent its support through ROSA TRI and added words or warning:

The Fishermen’s Association Ltd (FAL) - a founding member of ROSA -has total sympathy with the Italian and French fishermen facing escalating fuel prices and stringent EU Regulations. However be warned.

You may believe that the current social and economic crisis faced by the EU fishing industries is of gigantic proportions for the coastal communities and the industries they support; BUT our bitter experience over many years is that those Regulations will only get worse as the ultimate objective of the EU’s strategy is realised – the elimination of the fishing fleets of the Member States and the creation of an EU fleet.

It is time to reclaim our future from those who are making detrimental regulations not only to the resource but to those who make a living from it and who protect it for their children.

Decision making powers must be repatriated to the Member States as a basis for a series of regional fisheries management arrangements between the relevant Member States.

We will be happy to meet with representatives of all Member States fishing organisations who share that objective.

However while we sympathise with the frustration and anger of our EU colleagues we can neither condone nor participate in any illegal action.

Roddy McColl

On behalf of FAL

So far the reaction has been positive. We shall see whether a real alliance between the various organizations can be built.

Regulation 2141/70, the basis of the Common Fisheries Policy was adopted by October 1970 though, apparently, the FCO remained unaware of this or, possibly, insisted that it was unaware. The text we have linked to is in French as it was not published in English at the time, there being no English speaking country in the EEC. One imagines a translation was provided for the FCO eventually and for the negotiators. It was also published in Dutch, Italian and German.

A cursory glance through the Regulation shows that it establishes a common policy for the fisheries and the concept of commonly held waters or, in other words, equal access for all member states. In this Report the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations stated in Section 4.1:

Community control over fisheries is derived from explicit mention in the Treaty itself 2/, as enacted by the Council of Ministers through regulations in 1970 3/. They were consolidated in 1976 4/, with derogations provided for by the Treaty of Accession in respect of Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Regulation 2141/70/EEC, established a common structural policy for the fishing industry and in particular aimed to ensure equal access to the fishing grounds of each member State "coming under its sovereignty or within its jurisdiction". 5/

2/ Article 38 - para. 1, and Articles 39-46, read in conjunction with Annex II which brings fisheries within the overall common agricultural policy

3/ O.J. 1970 L 236/1 and 5 - Council Regulations 2141 and 2142/70/EEC

4/ O.J. 1976 L 20/1 and 19 - Council Regulations 100 and 101/76/EEC

5/ Article 2 of Regulation 2141/70 and restated in Article 2 of Regulation 101/76

Actually, the references are not exactly accurate (we shall deal with later developments in other postings) because the Regulation does not mention Article 38, merely, Articles 7, 42, 43 and 235.

Article 38 of the Treaty of Rome states:

1. The common market shall extend to agriculture and trade in agricultural products. “Agricultural products” means the products of the soil, of stock-farming and of fisheries and products of first-stage processing directly related to these products.

2. Save as otherwise provided in Articles 39 to 46, the rules laid down for the establishment of the common market shall apply to agricultural products.

3. The products subject to the provisions of Articles 39 to 46 are listed in Annex II to this Treaty. Within two years of the entry into force of this Treaty, however, the Council shall, acting by a qualified majority on a proposal from the Commission, decide what products are to be added to this list.

4. The operation and development of the common market for agricultural products must be accompanied by the establishment of a common agricultural policy among the Member States.

The reason Article 38 is quoted erroneously is because it is the only one that actually mentions fisheries or, to be quite precise, the products of fisheries and the establishment of a common market in them all.

The Articles that are actually quoted as the basis for the infamous Regulation do not refer to the subject as was stated by Service Juridique of the Council of Ministers in its Opinion of 18/05/1970. The Opinion discarded Article 38 as it did not cover fisheries themselves, only their products; it discarded Articles 39 - 43 as these did not even mention fisheries; and it discarded Article 7 as it did not furnish a sufficient base for the Regulation.

That left Article 235, a catch-all one, so familiar to those of us who have had the misfortune to deal with EEC/EC/EU legislation.

If action by the Community should prove necessary to attain, in the course of the operation of the common market, one of they objectives of the Community and this Treaty has not provided the necessary powers, the Council shall, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the Assembly [European Parliament], take the appropriate measures.

Even so, fisheries are not mentioned so the argument that Article 235 is a sound enough legal basis remains doubtful.

In the end none of it mattered. Breaking its own legal structures, not for the last time, the EEC's Council of Ministers passed the Regulation. The British government denied as long as it could its existence, then trumpeted as a great achievement that a derogation for the 6 mile zone was agreed and even that was under Community rules. The 6 - 12 mile zone was to be under limited control but all of this was merely a 10 year derogation.

In its negotiations, the British government accepted the basic premiss of the fisheries being a common resource and that, inevitably, meant equal access to the waters allowing for temporary derogations. 

That goes both for the World Wildlife Fund and the Guardian that dutifully reports the organization's every move, report and statement. It is, of course, disgraceful, that through those Third Country Agreements fleets of EU member states fish out the waters of developing countries (except those, like Namibia or Morocco, who have metaphorically speaking have shown the EU the door).

The reason for that is not the fact that European fishermen are particularly evil, though you would never guess that from the WWF's attitude but the Common Fisheries Policy itself. By turning the whole of the EU waters and fishing stock into common resource to be shared out between countries according to centrally decided rules voted on by all 27 members, the European Union has ensured that sustainable fishing as well as sustainable fishing communities has become a thing of the past.

At the same time the problem of heavily subsidized large fleets in some member states has remained. Essentially, those agreements are a way of passing on those problems to the countries outside the EU waters. But you would never guess that, either, from the article.

We are now living under a Danish Presidency in the European Union as the system of rotation goes on. Its work programme on the fisheries was presented  at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting. In parenthesis, it has to be noted that the European Union does not go in for mundane matters like legislation through elected legislative assemblies, however one calls them but through administrative work programmes that continue regardless of electoral cycles.

Regarding the fisheries policy reform, the Council will aim to conclude the debate on the reform package, which consists of a new basic regulation, a new common market organisation and a new European maritime and fisheries fund for 2014-2020.

Not a particularly ambitious programme and no mention of the real CFP that should come into its own this year.