European Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki embraces the principles of the Ocean 2012 coalition.

C.O.A.S.T. have become members of an organisation called Ocean 2012, which is lobbying for change in the EU’s common fisheries policy (CFP).  The CFP is undergoing root and branch reform after the European Commission admitted in its green paper that the CFP was not working.    Ocean 2012 is made up of community groups, environmental campaign groups and sustainable commercial fishermen from all over the EU, seeking to reform the Common Fisheries Policy across EU and to make it less of an embarrassment.  The key principles of Ocean 2012 are as follows:

-    Environmental sustainability is the over-arching principle without which economic and social sustainability is unobtainable
-    Decisions are taken at the most appropriate levels and in a transparent way, ensuring effective participation of stakeholders
-    Sustainable fishing capacity at EU and regional level
-    Access to ?sheries resources is conditional on environmental and social criteria
-    Public funds are only used in a way that serves the public good and alleviates social impacts in the transition to sustainable fisheries.

All of which are principles we thoroughly agree with.  The coalition of groups has about a year to really influence the decisions in Brussels. 

Why should CO.A.S.T. be involved?

One of the main issues which we have come across time and time again is that the policy makers in the centre do not really know what is happening on the ground.  So C.O.A.S.T.’s experience, while admittedly only affecting a small area, means that we have detailed access to actual events on the ground, which affect real communities and real fishermen.  What we felt was particularly exciting about the Ocean 2012 campaign was that the campaigners in Brussels were trying to find out from us what the problems were, before making suggestions to changes in policy.

What has COAST done so far?

We attended the Ocean 2012 conference in Brussels and discussed with the Brussels lobbyists how fisheries management worked in Scotland and the UK and suggested that a number of issues particularly concerned us.  These focused around the transparency of fisheries management and the attempted privatization of the resource by some aspects of the commercial sector, without a thought for the future or that the fishery was a public resource.  C.O.A.S.T. were not alone in focusing on these issues, and the same story was repeated from groups around the EU.

What will Ocean 2012 do for us?

Ocean 2012 provides us with a voice, where we feel we can be part of the EU reform process and an avenue for the ideas of C.O.A.S.T. members to be translated across the EU. 

The system also works the other way around. The decision making system for fisheries management in Brussels has recently changed with the Members of the European Parliament, taking a much more substantive role.  The problem is that for communities like ours, we don’t really know what MEPs can and cannot do.  Ocean 2012 will provide us with information over what to say to our MEPs so we can contact them at their surgeries and make feasible requests.

It will also be very useful to us to be able to draw on expertise from elsewhere.

Oh I almost forgot – we even got to meet the EU Fisheries Commissioner!