Publication - January 21, 2015
When public authorities, like national governments or the European Commission, invest public funds in the fisheries and aquaculture sectors, there is significant potential that these subsidies may directly or indirectly lead to more unsustainable fishing. In fact, public aid has been identified as an important driver for overfishing.
With this short contribution to the consultation on EU state aid guidelines, Greenpeace underlines the importance of establishing coherence between the EU's state aid rules and the objectives of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
In particular, Member states must be asked to demonstrate that the proposed aid measure is effectively aimed at achieving the objectives of the CFP and that it will contribute to their achievement without negatively affecting other CFP objectives or resulting, directly or indirectly, in an overall increase of fishing capacity.
Greenpeace submission to the state aid to fishery sector consultation