The headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will be the scene this Monday of protests by the rural and maritime sectors against far-reaching agreements that have been adopted in Brussels at the EU level.
The agricultural employers’ associations Asaja and COAG They have called a protest for noon on Monday before the department headed by Luis Planas, to express his “discomfort at the lack of effective responses to the many problems that Spanish farmers and ranchers are accumulating, including the recent agreement signed between the EU and Mercosur”, as reported by the two organizations. in a statement.
They complain that “after the wave of protests and demonstrations that have taken place since the end of 2023 in the different provinces and autonomous communities, and which culminated in a large tractor-trail through the center of Madrid in February 2024, the Ministry of Agriculture decided to implement a package of measures that did not have the endorsement of the main agricultural organizations, and that has been clearly shown to be insufficient to provide response to the demands of the sector”.
“The demands of those protests are still valid,” say Asaja and COAG, who mention that “the high production costs and low prices at source in a good part of the production continue to be a drag on the economies of agricultural holdings,” and that “essential reforms and operational changes in the Agri-Food Chain Law, or in the Agrarian Insurance system, have still not occurred.”
“Change of course”
However, the issue that you now see as “real threat” to the countryside is “the proliferation of EU free trade agreements with third countries.” “Imports of agricultural products from Mercosur, Chile, Morocco or New Zealand, with prices below our production costs and without complying with the regulations that prevail for community production, seriously impact Spanish and European farmers and cause unaffordable losses and farm closures”.
“For all these reasons, we demand a change of course in the policies that concern the agricultural sector, with more proactive decisions in defense of a sector that is hitting rock bottom, with income that is insufficient, with a loss of assets that is bleeding and with a generational change that is not enough to maintain activity on our farms and in rural areas,” they underline in the statement.
“Burning phone”
Also for this Monday, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has convened the national shipowners’ association, Cepesca, and the fishermen’s guilds, to study the viability of the new technical capture measures included in the fishing agreement reached days ago in the EU, and that they would avoid the 79% cut in days of work that Brussels had initially proposed.
Cepesca has shown its displeasure both for the new technical conditions of slaughter and spaces closed to capture and for the additional costs what he believes its implementation will entail for the fleet.
The general secretary of the employers’ association, Javier Garat, said after the announcement of the agreement that “despite the effort that we know that Minister Luis Planas and his team have made, my phone is burning with messages from shipowners and fishermen, because the assessment that our people do is that the result is not good.
For the employers, the agreement is negative because ““The starting point of the 79% reduction in working hours is maintained” (as the European Commission proposed at the beginning of the ministers’ meeting last Monday), and the compensation mechanisms that are required will involve “an additional cost that is not free and that not everyone will be able to bear.”
Regarding the demand for more selective meshes, Garat said that “if we put larger meshes we will be able to catch water, because the fish will not stay and that is a ruin.”
Besides, added as harmful aspects of the agreement that there will be more areas where fishing will be prohibited and that flying doors may be included, but not all shipowners will be able to access it because that costs “a lot of money.”
Regarding the financing aid promised by the Executive, he pointed out that its execution will take “long periods” after the corresponding discussions with Brussels and with the five affected Spanish autonomous communities, “and the shipowners will have to make advances that many will not be able to make.” and “the sector is already at its limit.”
The ministry has been convinced that, despite these complaints, the sector will accept the deployment of the six measures decided for Spain in the agreement, which establish a change of meshes to prevent small specimens from being trapped, the implementation of a package of closed days and spaces for several weeks a year, and the use of flying doors in trawl nets that are more respectful of the seabed and represent fuel savings.
They are “perfectly acceptable measures”, They say in the ministry, because part of the Spanish fleet is already applying them in the case of the size of the nets and flying doors, and that they have also worked in other EU fishing grounds previously.
Depending on the percentage of boats that are willing to apply these measures and the combination of all of them that is determined, this will be the number of days of allowed days that can be maintained taking into account reference to that 79% cut in the dates that Brussels has decided for 2025 compared to 2024 in a scenario in which the measures will not be applied. Only with the renewal of the meshes, the ministry estimates that a very similar number of days to the current one would be retained.
Subsidized disbursements
In the case of replacing the networks, the average cost of each new unit would range between 500 and 700 euros, but in the case of flying doors, their installation requires the shipowner to spend approximately 60,000 euros.
From the ministry they clarify that they will be measures subsidized entirely with public funds, and to receive the aid it will be necessary to prove that the investment has been made. The sources consulted did not specify this Friday if there will be loans for the advance payment of the financing. They recognize that it will be necessary to go through an administrative procedure specific to the granting of public financing, depending on each autonomous community.
The ministry says that “a scenario in which the sector decides not to apply the measures is not contemplable”. “They are perfectly acceptable measures in Spain, we have already discussed them with the sector in recent years and we have experience from other fisheries that can be perfectly transferred to the Mediterranean,” indicated ministry officials.
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