Expensive Commissioner Kadis,
We write on behalf of a whole lot of hundreds of European Union residents, in addition to scientists, small-scale fishers and civil society organisations, with one demand:
Finish backside trawling in Europe’s marine protected areas (MPAs).
This 12 months has seen unprecedented momentum and mobilisation towards that aim. The EU Ocean Pact session was flooded with submissions calling for a ban on backside trawling. Over 250, 000 residents signed petitions. Authorized complaints have been filed. Courts dominated for conservation. Scientific research continued to bolster the ecological and social advantages of eradicating damaging gear. And member states are transferring forward on marine safety — with Sweden and Greece banning backside trawling of their MPAs, and Denmark starting the identical throughout 19 p.c of its waters.
In your current remarks on the PECH Committee, you mentioned: “I’ll repeat my place concerning banning backside trawling in MPAs. I’m not in favor of 1 dimension matches all. What I’m saying is that in MPAs we are able to have administration plans, as foreseen within the related laws. The administration plans can establish which actions are suitable with what we need to shield. If backside trawling is suitable, it will possibly proceed. If not, it ought to be stopped. I couldn’t think about a Natura 2000 space, the place the seabed is of excessive worth and weak, having a administration plan that may permit backside trawling.”
Your individual remarks acknowledged that backside trawling mustn’t happen in Natura 2000 websites that shield precious and weak seabeds. But that is the case in the present day, and has been the case for the final three a long time. Your insistence that “one dimension doesn’t match all” leaves the door vast open for the established order to proceed. This case by case method that you just describe will not be safety; it dangers prolonging a long time of inaction by sidestepping the precautionary and preventative precept enshrined within the Lisbon Treaty, indulging member state inertia as an alternative of guaranteeing coordinated EU management. It’s a harmful step backward from the EU worldwide dedication to halt marine biodiversity loss, and undermines the EU’s personal authorized framework together with the Habitats Directive. As a biologist, you recognize that damaging fishing strategies comparable to backside trawling by definition harm habitats, species, and ecosystems — and that these impacts are incompatible with the conservation goals of MPAs. The scientific consensus is evident: backside trawling and safety can not coexist.
Your insistence that “one dimension doesn’t match all” leaves the door vast open for the established order to proceed.
Shield Our Catch
The Habitats Directive does certainly present for particular person assessments in relation to the impacts of an exercise in a protected space — however the essential level is that such assessments should be carried out earlier than any exercise with probably important results could be authorised. In line with the precautionary precept, the beginning place is due to this fact that backside trawling in Natura 2000 MPAs is illegal — except a person evaluation can show that there isn’t any affordable scientific doubt as to the absence of antagonistic results.
If case by case stays the Fee’s place, it not solely contradicts its personal goal set out within the Marine Motion Plan, but in addition dangers the credibility of the Ocean Pact and forthcoming act collapsing earlier than they start. Residents, fishers, and scientists will see one more sequence of paper park insurance policies that undermine belief in EU management. So we ask: Commissioner, whose voices will the Fee prioritise? The 73 p.c of EU residents who assist a ban? The 76 p.c of the EU fleet who’re small-scale fishers, offering extra jobs with much less affect? Or the commercial foyer, whose case by case arguments threat echoing in your speeches?
If case by case stays the Fee’s place, it not solely contradicts its personal goal set out within the Marine Motion Plan, but in addition dangers the credibility of the Ocean Pact and forthcoming act collapsing earlier than they start.
Moreover, a case by case method for the 5, 000 EU MPAs creates disproportionate and pointless administrative burden, whereas a simply and consequent transition to a full finish to backside trawling in all MPAs underneath the Habitats Directive can be consistent with the EU’s simplification agenda. It might not solely contribute to the required readability, simplicity and stage taking part in discipline, but in addition replenish fishing grounds via spill-over results that profit fisheries.
This 12 months’s UN Ocean Convention in Good laid naked the hypocrisy of backside trawling in so-called protected areas. The Ocean Pact supplied an opportunity to right course, however in the end delivered solely aspirational targets and an endorsement of the continuation of the established order.
We urge you to:
Commit now to together with legally binding targets within the Ocean Act that may section out damaging fishing comparable to backside trawling in MPAs, guaranteeing wholesome seas and a safe future for Europe’s low-impact fishers and the communities they maintain.
As a scientist, you might be conscious of the proof. As a Commissioner, you will need to act on it.
This isn’t nearly biodiversity, nature safety and local weather resilience; it’s about equity, meals safety, and the survival of Europe’s coastal communities. The time for ambiguity has handed. The query is now not whether or not to behave case by case, however whether or not the Fee will show management by standing with residents and fishers — relatively than leaving area for industrial pursuits to dominate.
This isn’t nearly biodiversity, nature safety and local weather resilience; it’s about equity, meals safety, and the survival of Europe’s coastal communities.
Historical past will decide your management not on how fastidiously you calibrated the rhetoric, however by whether or not you delivered actual safety for Europe’s seas and the individuals who depend upon them.
Sincerely,
Shield Our Catch
Shield Our Catch is a brand new European marketing campaign supported by main ocean advocates Seas At Danger, Oceana, BLOOM, Blue Marine Basis, DMA, Empesca’t, Environmental Justice Basis, Solely One and Tara Ocean Basis, in collaboration with fishers, that joins a whole lot of hundreds of citizen activists is asking on European leaders to ban damaging fishing comparable to backside trawling in marine protected areas.
