Publication - June 12, 2012
Fisheries ministers in the European Union have been entrusted to work with the European Parliament to chart a new path for EU fisheries management that breaks with decades of short-sighted overexploitation of our seas and recovers fish populations to levels that can be fished sustainably. This ongoing reform of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) will probably be the last chance to stop the collapse of European fish populations and the inevitable demise of the EU fishing sector.
Yet, in recent weeks, horse-trading to accommodate all European countries and their fishing industries has resulted in an agreement amongst ministers that is astonishingly irresponsible. If this backroom deal were adopted unchanged, it would sanction continued overfishing by European fishermen for another decade, by which time most of the industry will have fished itself out of business.
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