PARIS — The European Commission on Friday backed a funding policy that leaves largely intact its substantial support for the fishing industry, despite the commission’s own finding that subsidies were leading to destructive overfishing.

The commission, the executive arm of the European Union, approved the creation of a €6.5 billion, or $8.8 billion, European Maritime and Fisheries Fund
to finance its Common Fisheries Policy
from 2014 to 2020. Both the revised fisheries policy and its funding are due to be finalized in 2013 by a vote of the 27 E.U. member states.

Maria Damanaki, the commissioner for maritime affairs and fisheries, said in a statement that the fund would “increase economic growth and create jobs in the sector. No more money will be spent to build big vessels. Small-scale fisheries and aquaculture will benefit of this budgetary greening.”

Conservationists said the commission had made progress in some areas, but expressed disappointment with the details, saying overcapacity, the biggest problem facing fish stocks, was not adequately being addressed and noting that little financing appeared to be set aside for enforcement activities and scientific assessment.

In a working paper
in 2008, the commission noted that subsidies to European fleets contributed to pressure on fish stocks that in some cases “is two to three times the sustainable level.” According to commission figures this year, 63 percent of stocks in Europe’s Atlantic waters are overfished, as are 82 percent of its Mediterranean stocks and two-thirds of its Baltic stocks.

Some groups assert that without subsidies, a huge swath of the industry would be unprofitable. Oceana, a nongovernmental organization in Brussels, estimated in September that E.U. fishing fleets received total subsidies — mostly for fuel — of €3.3 billion in 2009, equivalent to 50 percent of the value of the total catch. And 13 E.U. countries got more in fishing subsidies than the value of their catch.

Fuel subsidies are important since the cost of diesel is a critical part of the calculus of how long a boat can remain at sea and remain profitable, and boats that remain at sea longer are more likely to overfish.

In one case, the Union spent €33.5 million from 2000 and 2008 helping to modernize the bluefin tuna fleet, money that went largely to the giant purse seiners that are capable of vacuuming up entire schools of the endangered fish.

Conservation groups assert that European fishing subsidies have long been subject to abuse, saying that much of the money ends up in the hands of the largest industrial fisheries. A Greenpeace investigation
even found that Spain was subsidizing a fleet owner who had been convicted of illegal fishing.

The new funding policy would require that subsidies be cut off to anyone found guilty of illegal fishing, a nod to the so-called Johannesburg commitment, an E.U. pledge made in 2002 to phase out destructive fishing practices by 2012.

Markus Knigge, an adviser to the Pew Environment Group and the Ocean2012 coalition of conservation organizations, said Europe did not even know how it was spending its subsidies, because some of the most important fishing states, including Spain and France, had failed to carry out fleet assessments.

According to E.U. rules, “member states are obliged to assess overcapacity and put their efforts into eliminating it,” he said. “But if you don’t know where the overcapacity is, and you modernize the fleets, you may end up actually increasing overcapacity.”

Oliver Drewes, a spokesman for Ms. Damanaki, said he did not want to dismiss the concerns of conservationists, but “there are some innovative instruments being introduced here, and this is just the start of it.”

“The way things are going to be designed in practice is what’s going to make the music,” Mr. Drewes said.

In one of the biggest changes, the fund proposal approved Friday would extend financial support for the first time to the growing aquaculture sector.

Funding, which is co-financed by member states, also aims to help fishers and their families diversify their sources of income, and includes a budget for retraining the spouses of fishers whose families depend on the industry for their livelihoods.

The new proposal drops so-called scrapping subsidies, used to decommission boats to reduce overcapacity. The policy has been widely regarded as a failure: the European Union has spent €1.7 billion on scrapping fishing boats since the 1990s, according to the commission, with no effect on the problem of too many boats chasing too few fish. The problem has been partly that as smaller boats are decommissioned, larger, more technologically sophisticated boats have taken their places.

The new proposal instead calls for spending on “economically and socially productive activities,” including in fish processing, catering and tourism, as well as aid to small-scale coastal fleets.

It will also be used to help fishers adopt improved gear to reduce discards. But even that, conservationists warned, could be used to make existing boats more efficient, further increasing overcapacity in the fleet.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/business/global/eu-proposal-for-fishing-industry-support-raises-eyebrows.html?partner=rss&emc=rss