Tomorrow (29 June), the Agriculture and Fisheries Council will hold a debate on the future of the Common Fisheries Policy. The European Commission will exchange views with the member states’ fisheries ministers on the options to reform the Common Fisheries Policy. The Commission is likely to present legislative proposals early next year.

The British fishing industry is falling apart. The catch restrictions have been leading to millions of tons of dead fish being dumped back into the sea. The measures for fishery resources management, and the total allowable catch (TAC) and quota system are not operating effectively. The UK fishing fleet has been scrapped by 60 per cent and thousand of jobs have been already lost. According to the Taxpayers Alliance the CFP costs annually to the UK £2.81 billion.

It has been known for a long time that the CFP does not work. The Commission finally admit it, but too little too late! In April 2009, the European Commission has admitted the failure of the EU's Common Fisheries Policy by adopting a Green Paper launching a debate on its reform. The European Commission has stressed that “European fish stocks have been overfished for decades and the fishing fleets remain too large for the available resources” pointing out that “The outcome has been a continuous decrease in the amounts of seafood fished from Europe’s waters: more than half of the fish consumed on the European market is now imported.”

Having referred to the changes made to the CFP in 2002, the Commission noted that “the objectives agreed in 2002 to achieve sustainable fisheries have not been met overall” due to over exploitation of stocks, fleet overcapacity, heavy subsidies, limited economic resilience and a considerable decline in catches by European fishermen. The Commission recalls that most EC fisheries are managed by setting Total Allowable Catches (TACs) of which each Member State obtains a national quota. The Commission has recognised that such system creates “unwanted by-catches when the quota of one species is exhausted while quotas for other species remain, which leaves fishermen with no choice but to discard the fish which they are no longer allowed to land.”

Fisherman, because of the quotas system and the limit amount of fish they are allowed to bring to land, are obliged to discard their fish when they exceed their quotas and when they try to bring it to land they face heavy penalties and criminal prosecution.

It remains to be seen which concrete proposals the Commission will put forward. The Member States have been focus their attention on adaptation of fishing capacities according to available stocks, waste reduction, decentralisation of management, strengthening the control procedures, different approaches for traditional coastal fishing and industrial fishing. There is a general agreement that the CFP must be reformed, but there is no consensus yet on how to reform the TACs and quotas system. Capacity reduction and subsidies are also controversial issues.

The Common Fisheries Policy is a shared competence between the EU and the Member States however the conservation of marine biological resources is locked into the Union as it is an exclusive competence. Measures under CFP are decided by QMV in the Council and the main decision making procedure is now, under the Lisbon treaty, the “ordinary legislative procedure” rather than the consultation procedure. A reformed common fisheries policy will not protect British interests. According to the European Commission “a fundamental reform of the CFP and remobilization of the sector can bring about the dramatic change that is needed to reverse the current situation.” However, the time has come to repatriate fisheries policy to Westminster.