Allister slams "absurd" Commission proposal on recreational fishing
21 January 2009
Traditional Unionist MEP Jim Allister has raised with the President of the Fisheries Council, Petr Gandalovic, at a meeting of the Fisheries committee in Brussels, what he termed "the latest ludicrous proposal" from the EU Commission whereby leisure sea anglers would be subjected to the full weight of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
In a proposal to tighten even further control mechanisms under the CFP, the Commission is proposing that any fish caught by recreational sea fishermen should be recorded and deducted from the member state's annual quota for the species involved. "This is absurd", said Mr Allister. "It would extend the strangling tentacles of the CFP to every leisure sea angler who goes out for an afternoon's fishing.
Every boat used would require to be licensed, every member state would have to set aside a proportion of its quota on every species for recreational fishing, every fish caught, from a boat or from the shore, would have to be logged and counted into the quota.
I have never encountered such a disproportionate and ridiculous proposition. Most recreational anglers do not sell their catch, indeed many return the fish caught to the sea and the proportion caught is miniscule. It is preposterous that a Commission which presides over the scandal of discards, whereby tons of edible dead fish are thrown back every day into the sea, should now, as the ultimate killjoy, try and crucify leisure fishermen with needless bureaucratic regulation.
As this proposal proceeds through the Fisheries Committee I will be relentless in seeking to expunge it from the Commission's package of proposals."
