Common Fisheries Policy - Criticism

Criticism

The Common Fisheries Policy has been argued by certain commentators to have had disastrous consequences on the environment. This view is contradicted by historical evidence that reveals that fishing stocks have been in chronic decline over the last century as a result of intensive trawl fishing. According to scientific research published in 2010, the depletion of fishing stocks is a consequence of mismanagement long before the Common Fisheries Policy came into being, a statement illustrated by the fact that UK catches have declined by 94% over the last 118 years.

Economists and historians recognise that common land tends to be overfarmed and overused, and in a similar vein the absence of property rights in the waters around the UK has led to overfishing such that the price of fish and seafood has rocketed. Whereas oysters were for hundreds of years the food of the poor, now they are a luxury. Cod stocks have been on the decline for some time, as have all other varieties of fish. Innovators are starting to come up with fish "farms" to get over this problem. To compound this problem, EU quotas mean that a huge number of fish are thrown overboard after being caught; yet as they are dead, this does not alleviate the problem as it was intended. Indeed, it just makes the fish at market all the more scarce and prices even higher.

The Common Fisheries policy has been a major reason for countries with big fish resources coupled with small home markets, like Norway and Iceland, the Danish dependencies Greenland and the Faroe Islands, and some more dependencies, to stay outside the European Union.