EU/ IRELAND: European fishing skippers who adopt "environmentally-friendly" catch methods may be rewarded with extra quotas or financial assistance, the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Commissioner, Dr Franz Fischler, has said.
He told an informal EU presidency meeting in Dundalk, Co Louth, yesterday that the "current ad-hoc" approach to certain conservation measures must be abandoned. The next two years should be spent "cleaning up" the existing set of technical measures applying to fish-catching methods, which would help to "simplify" EU management rules and "make them more transparent", Dr Fischler said.
The conference on environmentally-friendly fishing was attended by ministers from Denmark, Portugal, Germany, Holland and from the non-EU member-state Norway.
Speaking at a press conference yesterday, the Minister for the Marine, Mr Ahern, said that it was an attempt by the Irish presidency to move away from the current system of annual quota setting at late-night pre-Christmas sessions in Brussels.
The adversarial "us and them" stances adopted at December councils should be replaced by a system which involves the various stakeholders, given that it is accepted by all involved that certain fish stocks were in danger, Mr Ahern said.
The EU Commissioner said he did not necessarily believe that such an approach should have been adopted before the controversial 2003 review of the EU Common Fisheries Policy.
Acknowledging that there was some frustration over lack of implementation of some new aspects of the revised fish policy, Dr Fischler said that the EU was currently discussing establishment of new regional advisory councils which would give fishermen a voice in management.
A protest against salmon driftnetting was staged outside yesterday's conference at the Dundalk Institute of Technology by several Dundalk angling clubs.
