The European Parliament said the changes should enable the submission of annual data on the volume of aquaculture production to be improved, and will improve the accessibility of the requisite information.

According to the Parliament, in order to ensure a smooth transition, this regulation should allow for a transitional period of up to three years to be granted to Member States where its application to their national statistical systems would require major adaptations and would be likely to cause significant practical problems.

The Community legislation on statistics on aquaculture has been in force for more than ten years. It provides for Member States to submit annual data on the volume of aquaculture production to the Commission. Since Regulation (EC) 788/96 was approved, there has been a considerable increase in aquaculture.

"The current situation in the sector plays an important socio-economic role in several European regions by enabling the development of a processing industry with a promising future", says the rapporteur, Phillipe Morillon. "The need for a broader range of data has, therefore, become an urgent one, if there is to be rational development and management within the Common Fisheries Policy".

The need for wide-scale collection of statistical data on aquaculture stems from the importance of having an accurate and comprehensive overview of aquaculture businesses, their cultivation techniques and the different production environments, he added.

The EU’s aquaculture sector totals 1.3 million tonnes of fisheries products per year, representing some 3 billion euros. This corresponds to around one third of the total value of production in the EU’s fisheries sector and roughly one fifth of its volume. In some Member States the value of farmed products is higher than that of products landed. In others, aquaculture represents a significant proportion of total production. In Greece, for example, 100,000 of every 200,000 tons of fish are produced by aquaculture.

European aquaculture provides more than 80,000 full and part-time jobs, which is the equivalent of 57,000 full-time jobs.

www.fishupdate.com is published by Special Publications. Special Publications also publish FISHupdate magazine, Fish Farmer, the Fish Industry Yearbook, the Scottish Seafood Processors Federation Diary, the Fish Farmer Handbook and a range of wallplanners.

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