NFFO success in battle with EU Commission
Published: 24 November, 2009
THE NATIONAL Federation of Fishermens Organisations was celebrating after a European Commission proposal to hand itself additional powers
THE NATIONAL Federation of Fishermens Organisations was celebrating after a European Commission proposal to hand itself additional powers to apply technical conservation rules has been decisively rejected by member states at a recent Council of Ministers in Brussels at the weekend.
The NFFO lobbied vigorously against adoption of the flawed proposal which was being forced through by the Commission to beat co-decision making with the European Parliament. Co-decision to reduce the democratic deficit in Brussels was now an integral part of the Lisbon Treaty.
Not only had some 35 areas of concern been identified in the text, but experience told UK fishermen that in highly detailed, prescriptive rules like these, close and detailed scrutiny by officials and the industry is required to avoid errors and unintended consequences; that scrutiny had been denied us by the truncated timeframe allowed for adoption.
Not only had some 35 areas of concern been identified in the text, but experience told UK fishermen that in highly detailed, prescriptive rules like these, close and detailed scrutiny by officials and the industry is required to avoid errors and unintended consequences; that scrutiny had been denied us by the truncated timeframe allowed for adoption.
In addition, a number of regional advisory councils had written in protest that they had been marginalised in what should have been a core area of work for these groups.
The NFFO said that although the existing technical conservation rules were not without their own shortcomings, it was preferable to struggle on with these whilst a reasonable set of proposals are worked out over sensible amount of time.
It also argued that had the Proposal been adopted unchanged it would have put some classes of vessels out of business, reduced the scope for vessels to carry the gear necessary to be selective in different fisheries, and led to “hyper-discarding” in some fisheries.
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