During the last CFP reform, subsidies for new vessel building and engines were banned.
At the time a group of Member States did not like it but they did not have the votes.They wanted to be allowed to give their and EU taxpayers money to build new large vessels and modernise the existing fleet.
The UK now has an empty chair. Whilst they turn up to, they just take notes. They are forbidden from saying anything by HMG and don’t vote.
This means that a group of Member States have re-tabled the corporate welfare subsidies cheques back into proposed law. The Fisheries Committee looks set to support it. The Commission dare take the proposal off the table. The Commission reason that if national governments want to waste their taxpayers’ money bankrolling a small industry, so be it.
If the UK voted, the corporate welfare alliance of governments would not have the votes to get it through. Countries would not be allowed to write blank cheques for rich European fishermen.
During the last CFP, I set up a small web site, to help people know what vessels EU taxpayers had paid for in the past. I took it down because I never thought it was going to be needed.
Some of these self-same vessels are today still fishing in third countries waters.
I just found the photos of those vessels built with, or modernised by, European and Member State taxpayers.
