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Cover image: Fishing trawler at sea in rough seas, North Sea / The Image Bank © Arnulf Husmo
The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is one of the most integrated policies of the European Union. Under the Treaty of Lisbon the CFP (in particular its core business, the conservation and management of biological resources) remains in the limited group of its five exclusive competences, together with such fundamental pillars of the EU as trade policy, internal market, monetary policy (for the Member States of the Euro) and the customs union.
This makes the CFP a showcase of EU policy; its success or failure is important in terms of the way public opinion, both in Europe and abroad, sees the added value of the Union, way beyond the economic importance of the fisheries sector in the context of the European economy.
The world of fisheries tends to be conservative and resistant to change. For this reason, a fundamental characteristic of the CFP is that it has been and is still today, considerably shaped up by the weight of its own history. Surprisingly, the CFP today is influenced by political decisions taken 30 years ago and the established status quo tends to be extremely difficult to amend or reform.
To understand the policy of today it is essential to know the historical background leading up to its establishment. The Spanish-American writer George Santayana said: ‘those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. It is important to ensure that the historical experience of those who lived through the birth and development of the CFP can be transmitted to successive generations dealing with this policy in the present and the future. This is the purpose of this book.
I do not try to be systematic or comprehensive. Rather than an academic tutorial on the CFP, I believe it is more useful to offer an account of my own experience over more than 20 years dealing with the CFP in the European Commission and several more dealing with fisheries management outside it. For this reason my account of the CFP is partial and focuses on those policy areas where I have direct experiences allowing me to draw some lessons. The reader will probably miss a chapter on the fish market policy, or fish trade policy, and certainly much more detail about bilateral fisheries agreements, for example. These are the areas where I don’t have a substantial direct experience.
This book is addressed to all those who join in the fascinating task of dealing with the Common Fisheries Policy from any angle and I hope this book will be useful for them. I have written it thinking of the kind of book I would have liked to read when I started dealing with this policy many years ago.
I assume that potential readers are reasonably familiar with both fishery management policy and the European Union, its institutions and procedures. In any case, a Glossary has been included to help.
The idea of an official from the European Commission writing about the CFP is not new. Other colleagues have done this before me: John Farnell and James Elles in 1984 and Mike Holden in 1994 have written about the origins of the CFP. Ronán Long and Tony Curran in 2000 have written about controlling the CFP after their experience of working for the Commission services. But these important contributions must be complemented by a more updated view on the developments of the CFP in recent years.
These developments have consistently pursued one goal, which summarises the objectives of this policy in the Treaty: achieving biological, economic and social sustainability, as the basic tenet of the CFP.
The reader will find in the following pages a wholehearted defence of the role of the European Commission in the CFP. Needless to say the Commission’s role in running this policy can and will always be questioned. However, I remain convinced that most of the positive developments in the policy have been achieved thanks to the Commission’s determination and long term vision.
I am indebted to a number of key contributors to this book.
My former Director General Lowri Evans encouraged me to write these pages and authorised me to publish them. She also provided useful guidance on orientation and content.
Willem Brugge did a very complete revision of an early draft and provided me with very useful comments and suggestions on both content and style.
Ken Patterson gave me the benefit of his in-depth knowledge of a number of aspects of the CFP to enrich the text and get certain facts right.
Enrique López Veiga shared with me his encyclopedic knowledge of fisheries with an invaluable insight into key historical developments of the CFP.
Martin Newman was so kind to spend part of his retirement to do a thorough revision of the text, including a much-appreciated polishing of the English.
Other important contributors to different parts of the text were Eskild Kirkegaard on conservation and scientific matters, Miguel Peña, especially on economic questions, and Adela Rey on international law. Angel Calvo and Tim Lemmens provided some figures for this book.
Nadine Marcos kindly helped me find a number of references. A particularly difficult one could only be found thanks to Fotini Missailidou.
Last but certainly not least, my wife Amalia de Diego used part of her spare time to help me edit these pages, removing bugs and digging out bibliographic references. She also helped me underline the importance of market issues in the CFP.
My sincere gratitude to all of them.
The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author and not those of the European Commission.