267 Boats Get To Fish in Foreign Waters – All At Taxpayers’ Expense

The EU pays a few fishermen to go and fish in foreign waters. A lot of money  seems to go to around 267 boats.  They appear to get a lot of money to allow them to fish. But, the European Commission seems very shy about letting me know the names of these boats, where they come from., and how much subsidies they come from.

Hidden Agenda

I have been interested to find out who the EU is allowing to do this. It is not published. I asked the European Commission for this information. They don’t want me to know.

Spain and France – Corporate Welfare Queens

From the information I can gleam, it looks like a lot of this fleet has been built up and is maintained by subsidies from taxpayers. It seems most of the boats are from France and Spain.

Franz Kafka’s Is Alive

The Commission know the names of the boats. They know how much money they get and have been bankrolled in the past. They know where they are based.  They just don’t want taxpayers to know.

Who Wins From This?

My bet would be that most of these super vessels are based in the regions of Carmen Fraga and Alain Cadec MEP.  I guess it would be difficult to explain to hard pressed working families in Valencia who can’t even get access to life saving medicines that their governments continue to bankroll a long distant fishing fleet of super vessels. It would be hard for German MEPs like Werner Kuhn to explain to his voters why a a few rich fishermen have got tens of millions – and probably hundreds of millions – of subsidies to fish in west africa’s waters. It would be hard for UK Conservative MEPs to explain why they voted to keep subsidies flowing to this industry.

 

Request and Answer Below

Dear Mr McLoughlin,

 

Thank you for your e-mail dated 12/09/2012, requesting access to information/document under Regulation No 1049/2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents.

 

Please find below all requested information:

 

The Council Regulation 1006/2008 laid down in Art.17 provisions on access to data concerning fishing authorisations that have been submitted to the Commission.

These data shall be made available on a secure website for all users which are authorised by

• the Member States,
• the Commission or a body designated by the Commission, concerning control and inspection.

The data accessible to these persons shall be limited to the data they need in the framework of their fishing authorisation process and/or their inspection activities and shall be subject to the rules on data confidentiality.

 

Following the above provisions, the Commission is not in a position to provide information on fishing authorisations under FPA’s in third country waters to other parties or persons.

 

However, the Commission can release the following information on the number of EU vessels that are currently authorised to fish under each EU fishing partnership agreement, some of the fishing vessels being entitled to fish under several FPAs at the same time to ensure a continuity of their fishing activities based on highly migratory stocks.

 

• EU/Cap Verde:                         60 EU vessels
• EU/Comores:                            22 EU vessels
• EU/Ivory Coast:                        21 EU vessels
• EU/Greenland:                          25 EU vessels
• EU/Madagascar:                       57 EU vessels
• EU/Mozambique:                      36 EU vesels
• EU/São Tome y Principe:          26 EU vessels
• EU/Seychelles:                         20 EU vessels

 

With the exception of the Agreement signed with Greenland, all of FPAs currently in application are tuna FPAs.

In such a context, most of the vessels authorized to fish in third country waters, where a tuna FPA is in place, are nevertheless registered in dedicated databases, like these ones made publically available by

 

• ICCAT

http://www.iccat.int/en/vesselsrecord.asp

 

• IOTC:

http://www.iotc.org/English/record/search3.php

 

Other tuna RFMOs, like WCPFC, IATTC or CCSBT, also have publically available fleet registers.

 

With regard to the question of the EU contributions related to FPAs and granted to third countries, data, information (distinguishing between the amount directly linked to fishing possibilities and the amount earmarked for development of the third country fishing sector or fisheries policy) and legal basis are made available on the DG-Mare website, using the following link:

 

http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/cfp/international/agreements/index_en.htm

 

 

With reference to the question of subsidies, it is essential to remind that no subsidies are granted to EU fishing vessels through FPAs. Vessel owners have to pay access fees, generally divided into two parts, an advance paid previous to the delivery of the fishing authorization and a sorting out part based on the catches made by the fishing vessel in third country waters. The level of these fees are agreed among both parties, the European Union and the third country, and are fixed in protocols associated to the Fisheries Partnership Agreements. All these data are made publically available in the legal texts published on the EUR-Lex website :

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/RECH_mot.do

 

Best regards.

 

 

ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS