In Focus

Familiarity breeds contempt. This ,
in a nutshell, encapsulates the oftrepeated statements of various gov-
ernmentofficials on the status of
the world's natural fish stocks. At
the European Union (EU) conference on setting fishing quotas,
which began on April 22 at Brussels
in the Netherlands, the assertions
of the European Commission (EC)
members were the same: the stocks
of fish, especially in Europe, are
depleting. Drastic reduction in
fishing by member countries must
be executed, they chorused. And
finally, they agreed to meet by the
end of the year to agree on a new set
of rules which would provide a
multi-annual (covering two to
three years) guidance programme
for fishing.

But at the end of it all, the fish
continue to get netted. That has
been the one persisting feature in
the history of world fishing.
However, what the recent meeting
hopes to accomplish, and to a large
extent does too, is to focus more
attention on an aspect which
touches humankind per se. The
fisheries minister for the EC,
Emma Bonino emphasised that
"restructuring of the fleets" had to
happen. This will be given due priority for the next three-year programme from 1997 to 1999 under
the common fisheries policy which
was introduced in 1983. The fisheries policy in effect undertakes
multi-annual programmes and
mainly sets fixed ceilings for EU
activity and targets for fleet reductions.

Sadly, for the world's already
diminished fish stocks, many states
have failed to meet their fleet cuts
in the last multi-annual programme from 1992 to 1996. UK
leads the offender's list; it has cut
its fleets only by seven per cent
when the requirement was 19 per
cent. EC ministers have agreed on a
new scale of flexible fishing quotas
which will allow member states
falling short of their fishing quotas
this year to make up for it the next
year byan equivalent amount.