Joe Borg, the outgoing European Fisheries Commissioner has outlined his views on the future direction of travel for Commission policy fisheries.
While acknowledging that his opinions he said that “as it is abundantly clear that virtually no member state would consider abandoning Relative Stability”, the present allocation keys will survive the reform.
However the Mr Borg had not ruled some degree of change including the replacement of allowable catches with effort control, “in some fisheries, if an acceptable way of addressing how we would set effort levels in mixed fisheries could be found.
” It is clear that the attraction for effort for the Commissioner’s lies in his belief that it is a potential way of reducing or eliminating discards," he added.
The commissioner also touched on the failure of EU and Norway to agree a reciprocal agreement - which could hit the Scottish fleet is no solution is found - but he seemed reasonably confident that a deal could be concluded, “early in the New Year”.
Mr Borg also made it clear that decentralisation of the Common Fisheries Policy remained at the heart of future moves to reform that policy - something both the National Federation and Fishermen's Organisations and the Scottish Fishermen's Federation have been advocating for some time.What remains for discussion however, is the all-important detail.The NFFO said it had been at the forefront of the CFP reform debate to date and intended to be so over the course of the coming year, leading up to the publication of the Commission’s proposal in 2011
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