If discarding still takes place, but illegally and unreported, it will not be fully taken into consideration by scientists in their stock assessments

Reports show EU countries have not enforced fish discard ban

EUROPEAN UNION
Tuesday, October 15, 2019, 00:00 (GMT + 9)

Three major European countries have not enforced the EU ban on fish discards, threatening the sustainability of European fish stocks.

Environmental lawyers from ClientEarth have released three reports today showing that France, Denmark and Spain have not adequately controlled the application of the ‘landing obligation’ and not punished its violations.

The obligation to land all catches was introduced in 2013 to prevent the wasteful discard of unwanted fish at sea and to push operators to put in place more selective fishing techniques.

An estimated 1.7 million tonnes of fish and other marine animals are being thrown back into the sea each year.

ClientEarth Fisheries lawyer Elisabeth Druel said: “As long as discarding continues, we will not know how many fish are being killed at sea. Without this data, scientists cannot make the right estimates to protect our fish stocks.

“Discarding can result in the unnecessary death of millions of tonnes of fish every year. This is disastrous for fish stocks, our ocean ecosystem and the fishing industry.”

After a phasing-in period starting in 2015, the landing obligation became compulsory for all EU countries in January 2019.

But today’s reports show that Denmark, France and Spain have neither adopted the necessary control measures nor mechanisms that account for all catches including discards

The lack of sanctions in the three countries in 2017 and 2018 also indicates that the discard ban is not being properly enforced. In that period:

• Spain reported no infringements (download Spain Report)
• The Danish Fisheries agency detected only three infringements (download Danish report)
• French authorities applied no sanctions (download French report)

Druel added: “Some very concrete solutions exist to ensure that no fish is discarded, including equipping fishing vessels with remote electronic monitoring system like CCTV or net sensors. We encourage all public authorities to adopt these tools and apply sanctions to stop fish discards.”

In 2017, according to the latest available data, Spain represented 21% of the overall EU fleet in terms of capacity (gross tonnage), while France accounted for 11%. Denmark, which is also one of the biggest fishing nations in Europe, is currently facing an EU infringement procedure for failing to properly control fishing practices, and illegal misreporting of catches.

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