Ecological Transition and Agriculture collide over trawling in marine protected areas

Bottom trawling fishing within protected spaces has generated a clash between the departments of Ecological Transition and Agriculture. The European Commission suggested just over a year ago to EU Member States that this type of non-selective trapping practice should be banned from 2030 in all protected areas. The Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, like that of other European countries, reacted against this measure and rejects that it should follow these recommendations. Meanwhile, the Ministry for the Ecological Transition, like many of the departments with environmental responsibilities in the EU, has been in favor of the application of restrictions on the most aggressive types of fishing for the species that are protected in marine reserves, although without to apply a generic veto in all areas.

This controversy dates back to February 2023, when the Commission presented an action plan titled “protect and restore marine ecosystems for sustainable and resilient fisheries.” This document, which does not have the legal force of a directive or a law, is at the origin of the dispute between these two departments that is taking place in Spain and in several EU countries in which fishing has an important weight. The plan outlined several specific objectives for the protection of marine biodiversity. And the Twenty-seven were urged to “phase out moving bottom fishing in all” marine protected areas “by 2030 at the latest.” To begin with, Member States had to present at the latest “by the end of March 2024” their roadmaps for the protection of these marine reserves and to suppress these fishing practices that have been highly criticized by environmental NGOs for the damage they cause to the funds. This plan also states that trawling should not be allowed in any newly created reserve.

A few days after the plan was presented, EU fisheries ministers held a meeting in Brussels and a good number disqualified the European Commission’s proposal. They also rejected making the generic veto on bottom trawling fishing mandatory in all protected areas in 2030. “This is a voluntary roadmap, which is included in the action plan presented by the European Commission last year and “which was rejected by a majority of Member States,” the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture tells EL PAÍS.

However, the Spanish Department of Ecological Transition, headed by the third vice president, Teresa Ribera, has understood that it must follow the recommendation on the roadmap set by Brussels and on April 4 it sent the information to the Commission, in format excel, about the measures it has in place and those it proposes for this decade for the protection of biodiversity in marine reserves. But that shipment was alone, not together with Agriculture, due to the refusal of Luis Planas’s ministry to recognize the relevance of the Brussels plan, according to government sources.

“In general, this same thing is happening in other countries,” says Tatiana Nuño, a member of the organization, about this dispute between ministries. Seas At Risk, which follows the EU’s ocean protection policies from Brussels. “They are not coordinating,” she adds. The organization for which Nuño works together with Marine Conservation Society and Oceania posted a few days ago a report which highlights that bottom trawling is practiced in 90% of the marine protected areas of the European Union. And they demanded its ban, as Brussels requested a year ago. But Nuño admits that the Commission’s strategy is not being effective because the countries’ fisheries and environment departments are not working in a coordinated manner.

A meeting between representatives of the Commission and the ministers with powers in fisheries and environmental protection is scheduled for mid-June. It will be the second meeting to address the controversial plan for Brussels marine reserves and trawling. In the first, held a few months ago, many of the fisheries ministers already made it clear that they did not consider the Commission’s proposal on the veto of this technique binding.

But among the Twenty-seven there are also exceptions. In the middle of this month, environmental groups achieved an important victory: Greece became the first EU country to announce that it will ban bottom trawling in all of its marine protected areas by 2030 – in the case of national parks that ban will be brought forward to 2026. To defend the measure, the Greek Government argued that this practice “is the greatest threat to marine habitats” and that vetoing it is “the most effective measure for the preservation of marine biodiversity, the restoration of marine ecosystems and the promotion of sustainable fisheries”. In its plan from a year ago, the Commission also warned that “bottom trawling” is “one of the most widespread and harmful activities for the seabed and its habitats.”

Selective veto in Spain

In the documentation sent to Brussels, which EL PAÍS has accessed, the Ministry for the Ecological Transition does not propose a total and generic veto on trawling in all marine protected areas. Their proposal is to prevent the use of this technique when it affects the species for which an area has been declared protected. For example, when these gears can damage the coral that is intended to be protected when declaring a reserve.

Some vetoes are already in force, they explain in the Ministry for the Ecological Transition. Others will be developed in the coming years as the management plans for each area come into force. One of the restrictions that are planned to be applied in several marine spaces is to only allow “trawl fishing with pelagic doors that do not come into contact with the marine substrate.”

For its part, Agriculture defends that “Spain is encouraging the use of an alternative fishing technique to traditional trawling, which is carried out,” precisely, “with a technique of flying doors, pelagic doors with very limited contact with the bottom. Marine”. “There is already a very high number of vessels that have made this transition and are using this type of gear,” says the Planas department. To understand the position of this ministry, we must remember that in Spain trawling has 805 vessels in the entire national fishing ground (just under 10% of the entire Spanish fleet), and the ministry emphasizes that its activity is already subject to restrictions in certain areas.

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