Letter from Joe Borg Re: Article 47

Printed below is a letter from Joe Borg, member of the European Commission and chief architect of the Article 47 proposal, briefly outlining the proposals with regard to recreational sea anglers. Our thanks has to go to Steve Barton, Chairman of the Plymouth Liberal Democrats and his colleagues for successfully managing to produce a reply from Joe Borg and also to local MEP for the South West and Gibraltar, Graham Watson and Stephen Kearney, Chair of the South West Devon Liberal Democrats.

Dear Mr Watson,
I would like to thank you for your letter dated 8 January 2009 in which you request clarification on the scope of Article 47 on recreational fishing in our proposal on how to control fisheries in the EU waters in the future.

As you know I attended the Hearing of the Fisheries Committee of the European Parliament on the Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy on 10 February 2009 and pointed out publicly that the Commission does not want to submit all recreational fishermen to quotas as is the case for commercial fisherman. Let me emphasise that our proposal would not cover either shore anglers, including those wading in the sea, or anglers fishing from a pier or from a canoe. It would in fact only cover recreational fisherman who from a vessel in the open sea and who catch fish, which are under multi-annual plans that are threatened by extinction. The hobby angler, who catches a few kilos of fish every time he goes out fishing and uses it exclusively for his private consumption, will not be covered by control regulation, even if he catches fish like cod which is under a recovery plan.

The establishment of the precise catch threshold from which controls will have to apply, whether it be 5, 10 or 15 kilos or some other yard stick will depend on the kind of fish caught. I announced’ in my speech at the European Parliament last week that this threshold will be determined on a case by case basis after we have received advice from the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee on Fishers (STECF), which should provide us with advice on a proportionate figure that makes common sense.

My services are currently working on the draft implementing regulation, which will spell this out precisely, so that those fisherman and anglers whose activities clearly have a negligible biological impact are not burden with disproportionate requirements.

Yours Sincerely,

Joe Borg
Member of the European Commission

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