The Minister of the Sea, Marta Villaverde, has led in Brussels a delegation from the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR) in a meeting with officials from the Directorate General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE), to whom she has conveyed the priorities of the European coastal regions.
In the meeting, representatives from different coastal areas of basins such as the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea participated, with the aim of discussing the future strategy Vision 2040 and the review process of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
During the meeting, the Minister of the Sea emphasized that the community fishing policy "has made significant progress since 2013, but we must also be honest about what has not worked: after more than a decade, the fleet is aging, the sector struggles to attract a new generation, and many coastal communities remain in a difficult economic and social situation." "We do not ask to go back, we ask to move forward through a review focused on the provisions that are holding us back," she states.
Villaverde stressed the progressive aging of the boats, which in the case of the Galician coastal fleet averages over 30 years and in certain areas approaches 40. She also recalled that the total European fleet has decreased in the last ten years, from about 87,000 vessels in 2013 to around 73,000 in 2023.
"Under those conditions, our fleets have already done their part; now we ask to renew what remains without confusing modernization with an increase in fishing effort," she explains. And indeed, "a cleaner engine, modern safety equipment, or a decent cabin does not catch one more fish." She warns that without real modernization, it will be impossible to ensure generational renewal, and alerts that the next multiannual financial framework could prove insufficient to undertake the renewal of the fleet and the necessary energy transition.
Regarding the landing obligation, the Minister of the Sea points out that "the Commission's own evaluation recognizes that it did not yield the expected result and that, in many fisheries, discards are due to excessively rigid rules and not to bad practices," which is why she proposes focusing efforts on improving selectivity and strengthening the scientific basis rather than increasing the sanctioning regime. As an example of this mismatch, she cites the case of the semi-pelagic longline ('pedra-bóla') from Burela (Lugo), affected by deep water closures.
In this sense, it refers to the study of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) --prepared based on more than 6.3 million hooks and in which hake represented more than 90% of the catches--, which confirms a marginal impact on vulnerable species (one fragment for every 600,000 hooks)--, to demand a review of the current technical classification of this fishing gear.
Finally, Marta Villaverde extended a formal invitation to the officials of DG MARE to travel to Galicia and be able to "show them firsthand the reality" of the Galician fishing communities, and expressed her willingness for them to participate directly in the upcoming meetings of the CRPM fishing working group, in order to maintain a stable institutional dialogue over time.