This Wednesday, the EU Fisheries Ministers closed an agreement on fishing opportunities in community waters of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean in 2025. What was agreed will reduce the fishing effort of trawlers by 66% in Spanish and French Mediterranean waters, although with a compensation mechanism that could allow it to be increased.
The agreement in the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council was reached unanimously in the early hours of this Wednesday after two days of meeting in Brussels. The European Commission (EC) had initially proposed a 79% cut in fishing days in the Mediterranean. That percentage would barely have allowed the Spanish trawl fleet to fish 27 days a year. Spain had opposed it from the beginning.
As regards the Western Mediterranean, ministers agreed to reduce fishing effort by trawlers in 66% in Spanish and French waters. In France and Italy, this effort is reduced by 38% to protect demersal populations.
According to the Spanish Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Luis Planas, what was agreed is a “good result for Spain.” According to their calculations, with the application of these selective measures it will be possible to “maintain the 2024 working days”, which were 130.
Trawler fishermen had 220 days of fishing per year in 2019, which became 130 in 2023. The transitional period that has continued until 2024 has meant a 40% reduction in fishing days.
The balance: profitable sector, living Mediterranean
The Hungarian presidency of the Council of the European Union says that “the agreement reached will allow fish stocks to be maintained at sustainable levels and protect the marine environment, while also considering the viability of the sector.” Because that is the key to this cutback agreement and so many others that came before: how to keep the fishing sector profitable and at the same time leave the Mare Nostrum.
“It will allow populations to be maintained at sustainable levels while considering the viability of the sector.”
The European Commissioner for Fisheries, Costas Kadis, assures that the agreement on the Mediterranean “addresses the fishing mortality, which is still too high, preserves the livelihoods of fishermen in the long term and improves opportunities for the recovery of fish stocks.
But who pays what it costs to “fish better” to stop the deterioration of the Mediterranean? Because the European Commission document, like other United Nations documents, say it clearly: Either we stop fishing (so much) or the living Mediterranean ceases to exist..
How do you pay for more sustainable fishing?
Kadis assures that what is intended is to “incentivize sustainable practices that protect fingerlings and increase selectivity” in the Mediterranean. And for this, he says, a compensation mechanism “that will also alleviate the impact socioeconomic” of the reduction in fishing days.
“We will fish on practically the same days, almost the same fishing possibilities but in a more sustainable way.”
The key is how to fish from now on; how, and with what procedures, the Spanish, French and Italian trawler fleets should fish. If we fish in a more sustainable way then we can continue fishing as much as we do now.. According to the European commissioner of the sector, fishing will continue “on practically the same days, almost the same fishing possibilities but in a more sustainable way.”
Twelve measures to fish sustainably
Kadis says that fishing skippers can benefit from a “substantial” increase in the number of days on which they go out to sea to fish “if they commit to selectivity”, by closing sea areas to fishing and by the use of “innovative” fishing instruments. When the commissioner speaks of “selectivity” he refers to the ability of fishing methods to select the desired fish and sizes.
It is the small print of the agreement: up to twelve measures. For example, according to Kadis, If a boat uses 15 millimeter meshesunder certain conditions you can receive 50% more fishing days. Also, if a fishing vessel uses certain trawl nets, it may increase the number of working days by 9.3% compared to the 27 days initially proposed by the Commission.
Trawling in Spain maintains 17,000 jobs. Shipowners will therefore have to change the gear with which they fish so that trawling does not take away smaller species and specimens. I mean, nets that fish more selectivelyto.
We have gone from 27 days to 130. We are dead the same, with 27 than 130. In the end, our work will not be viable.”
The twelve measures that fishing vessels in the western Mediterranean must comply with in order to be able to fish as much as they do until now (those 130 days) refer, in addition to meshes, flying doors, the imposition of bans or temporary closures of some areas to protect demersal species. The documents handled by Brussels show special concern for red shrimp and hake fry.
But the result of fishing as many days as now but with more sustainable and selective procedures is that less will be caught. “It’s already been tried here and with the mesh change you get half of it,” says Cristóbal Hernández, Almería shipowner, to the Almeria Newspaper. But that is what Brussels intends: to fish less, to fish better, to keep the Mediterranean alive.
Does 27 matter the same as 130?
The fishing flora is concerned how to pay for those changes and not die trying. The commissioner explained that there will be financing from the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund “so that fishermen can request these measures.” The Spanish government has asked the EC to explore the possibility that measures to improve fishing can be implemented with financing from European funds.
And yet, the sector—made up of small companies and crews—sees the future very bleak. “We have gone from 27 days to 130. We are dead the same, with 27 or 130. In the end, our work will not be viable,” says the president of the Catalan National Federation of Fishermen’s GuildsAntoni Abad. “I want to remember that we have crews, small companies, but companies. But with activities of only 130 days we are not viable,” he says.
They think something similar, for example, in Almería. The president of Asopesca (Provincial Association of Fishing Entrepreneurs in the Extractive Sector), José María Gallart, considers the agreement “bad, negative, a failure.” As he explains, “we are not going to recover 100% of the days, because for that the entire fleet would have to change the mesh and We believe that only 80% will do so.“.
The agreement reached is only for 2025, And in 2026? “We will not know until December 2025… It seems to me to be an outdated form (of negotiation),” says Minister Planas.
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