European Union plans to ease the pressure on over-exploited fish stocks next year have been criticised by conservationists who accused ministers of ignoring scientific advice.
After two days of talks which ended in the early hours of this morning, ministers rejected proposals to ban cod catches in the Irish Sea and the straits between Sweden and Denmark, and agreed a massive increase in North Atlantic haddock catches for 2012.
"We managed to strike the right balance between the needs of the fisheries sector, and the protection of stocks and managing the limited resources in our seas," Poland's deputy agriculture minister, Tadeusz Nalewajk, who led the talks, told a news conference.
But conservation group Oceana said the final deal had fixed catch limits more than 20 per cent above the maximum level recommended by the European Commission, which would hamper EU efforts to put an end to decades of overfishing.
"This type of short term approach will lead to the deterioration of not only fish populations, but also of the profitability of the sector and the viability of the fishing communities," Oceana's executive director for Europe, Xavier Pastor, said in a statement.
Minister for the Marine Simon Coveney said the commission accepted the strong case he made for an increase in quotas for haddock and whiting in the Celtic Sea of 25 per cent and 15 per cent respectively which he said “were entirely justified" based on scientific data he presented to the commission.
The Minister described the council as “very challenging” and said his priority from the outset "was to achieve an outcome that protected the Irish fishing industry while respecting the most up-to-date scientific data for priority stocks of critical importance to our fleets.”
The bloc's fisheries chief, from Greece, succeeded in pushing for a ban on all cod catches in the west of Scotland next year, but not in the Irish Sea and the straits between Sweden and Denmark, where ministers agreed to cut catches by 25 and 30 per cent respectively.
"I hope that our fishermen will be happy, since there were a lot of stocks where we had increases," Maria Damanaki told a news conference after the meeting. "This year, the message is not only cuts, but also increases in many important stocks."