"A very serious discussion is expected, as fishery is economically as well as culturally essential for many countries, including Estonia. At the same time it is clear that European fish resources should be well maintained, over-catching must be stopped and organisation of the entire fishing industry should become more reasonable," said the Minister of the Environment Keit Pentus, who is representing Estonia. Estonia supports majority of the measures proposed by the commission and the Chairman. The reform should end throw-back of dead fish into the water, which has been prohibited in Estonia for years already. The system of transferable fishing rights proposed by the commission is also currently successfully used in Estonia and we support it in the form that would allow the Member States to decrease bureaucracy related to the register of fishing vessels. We consider the plan to make adoption of fishing-related decisions more regional very reasonable, as it would allow, for example, the Baltic Sea countries to resolve the local problems among themselves. "The European fishery reform package is a kind of confirmation to the fact that Estonia has made the right decisions in the field of fishery already for a long time. In this light we are glad that we are now closer to mutual understanding with the European Union also in the field of fishing capacities and I believe that we will be able to avoid such radical and unreasonable reductions as seen in the recent years in the quota discussions of the coming year," said Pentus. However, the current proposals also include some with which Estonia does not agree. "In our opinion, it is not necessary to place a control camera on every fishing vessel – this would be very expensive and could be reasonable in some exceptional cases, but not always. We also find that smaller fish included in the catch as an inevitable by-catch that cannot be viably returned to the water, should be allowed to be used for human consumption as well," the Minister of the Environment said. According to the current plans, the fishery reform of the European Union should enter into force from the coming year. |
