Press release - 20 December, 2002
After more than four days of extended talks on the future of EU
fisheries, Greenpeace today said that any further compromises would
make a nonsense of any sound fisheries management plan and would
only jeopardize any remaining hope for the remaining fish stocks
and the fishermen.
"What we are seeing are EU Ministers gutting fisheries
management plans and refusing to face the fundamental issue: too
many ships chasing fewer and fewer fish," said Helene Bours,
Greenpeace campaigner. " An opportunity to redress decades of
overexploitation is being lost through this political horsetrading
going on right now behind closed doors."
Greenpeace believes that the solutions are at hand, but that the
political will to put them in place is completely missing, as
evidenced by the deadlock in negotiations.
"We are calling for the EU Ministers to wake up and swallow the
bitter pill now and to build a future for the oceans and fishermen
and coastal communities depending upon them," said Bours. "The
alternative is to compromise so much that any fisheries management
plan will be useless to save the cod and other threatened species
in the North Sea. Unless the politicians act decisively, then no
one else will. They will have to bear the blame and shame of their
inaction for future generations."