New perspective is expected to change the Common Fisheries Policy in Denmark.
Eva Kjer Hansen, Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, expressed that the government wants bureaucratic and inefficient fisheries management to be replaced by the responsibility and accountability of the fishermen themselves. She appreciates that the French EU Presidency has put the question of fisheries policy reform on the agenda of the Council of ministers on Monday 29. September 2008.
In that conference she present the Danish views in the hope that the French initiative will enable EU to make important improvements of the Common Fisheries Policy(CFP) well ahead of the planned revision in 2012. According to her the recent CFP can hardly be praised as either sustainable or an economic success to fishermen or coastal communities. Eva Kjer Hansen explained that the authority has seen a number of relevant diagnoses of the failure of the CFP, and it is my point of view that we need a new policy, where discard of fish stops and where the catch from each stock gives the highest long term economic yield of fish at the lowest impact cost in stock and environment.
She pointed out that the individual fisherman should be accountable for his total catches, not just – as it is now – his landings at port. She expressed that all catches should be counted against the quota, which will mean that the fisherman cannot optimize his economy by discarding. The fisherman has to develop selective fishing methods, which would be user driven instead of driven by detailed regulations. At the end of the day, it is in the interest of all parties involved to avoid discard and it is essential that the fishermen have an active involvement and a greater responsibility in the new policy”, says Eva Kjer Hansen.
In order to reach the ambiguous goals Denmark has launched an experiment this month, where six vessels have been equipped with camera monitoring systems to prove that a precise and reliable counting of all catches is possible.
