Common Fisheries Policy

“TO FISH OR NOT TO FISH; THAT IS THE QUESTION”

The Common Fisheries Policy, stated as some as the “legal verdict towards sea life destruction” is again on the spotlight with the upcoming 2014reforms that shall endure for the following 10 years.

The title phrase could easily adapt into the current situation in which a huge number of agents are involved but apparently no one finds a suitablesolution to. But what makes the CFP so controversial? And first of all, what is the Common Fisheries Policy?

Back in 1970, in the views of European integration, the former 6 founding members ofthe European Community found the need of creating a common strategy plan to develop, promote and decide over the fishing activity inside European boundaries. Several years later, in 1983, the concept ofTotal Allowable Catch (TAC) was introduced into the CFP with the objective of limiting and distributing fish stocks equally between all the member countries, but it also obligated fishermen to dumpthe excess of totally profitable fish back into the sea (dead), when the established quotas of quantity or species were overpassed. This led to the first controversies and contradictions regarding theCFP, since although it was first intended to incentivize fishing throughout the modernization of the European fleets by the currently known as European Marine and Fisheries Fund (EMFF), it was of nosecret that overfishing and dumping was starting to become a more important threat in ecological, social and economic sustainability. For this reason since 1992, the EU has been progressively orderinggovernments to stop the exploiting pressure of their fishing activity and to consequently decrease their fleets in number.
Indeed, numbers also support the need for a more sustainable Europeanfishing system. According to the WWF, currently two thirds of the European fish stocks are being overfished, and without any drastic measures, 9 out of 10 stocks will be at unsustainable levels by 2022....