EU to tighten fisheries rules

BRUSSELS - Europe's fisheries chief pledged on Monday to crack down on illegal fishing by tightening inspections and raising penalties for lawbreakers in a bid to preserve the EU's severely overexploited species of fish.

Speaking after an informal meeting of EU ministers, European Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg said existing controls were weak, inadequate and jeopardized the entire EU fisheries policy.

His remarks came just a couple of months after the EU's financial watchdog issued a report saying the European Union had no idea how many fish its fleets caught each year and was also failing to clamp down on vessels exceeding national quotas.

"There is no doubt there is an urgent need to bring about necessary reforms. If we do not do this, the entire basis of the Common Fisheries Policy will be put into question," he said.

"The current control system is so inefficient... the weaknesses are manifest," he told a news conference. "And the level of sanctions is far too low to be a deterrent to would-be lawbreakers. We do not have a level playing-field in place."

Referring to a need to "foster a culture of compliance" across Europe's fisheries sector, Borg said EU had unreliable data on fish catches despite spending 400 million euros ($585 million) on controls a year, half going on seaborne inspections.

In early October, Borg will propose legal changes to fisheries policy that would focus on catch reporting, markets and rules for imports, a key area where he wants to fight illegal fishing since the EU is a particularly lucrative market for a trade that is worth around 8 billion euros a year.

For many species, especially mainstays like cod, haddock and hake, EU stocks have been hard hit by years of chronic exploitation and, in some cases, have come close to collapse.

The watchdog report, published in early December by the European Court of Auditors, criticized both EU governments and the Commission, the bloc's executive arm, for not doing enough to enforce the rules and stop the overfishing: a phenomenon that international scientists have warned the EU about for years.

For more than 20 years, EU ministers have agreed annual fishing quotas by species, fishing area and country.

Catch volumes are calculated on information provided by authorities in each country. Under EU law, a country may be fined if its vessels break the rules - for example, if they use small-mesh nets to trap extra fish, or trawl in closed seasons.