As far as Ireland, and the Irish fishing industry, is concerned, the days of the slightest hint of ‘proportional representation’ are clearly over with the latest announcement of the new EU Fisheries Committee Members (without a single Irish representative)
The Committee, reduced from previous years from 28 to 27 members, includes:
SPAIN 5
NETHERLANDS 4
FRANCE 4
SWEDEN 3
PORTUGAL 2
CROATIA 2
ITALY 2
GREECE 1
MALTA 1
HUNGARY 1
DENMARK 1
GERMANY 1
IRELAND, with its total area sea area of approximately 220 million acres (880,000 sq. km):
ZERO members …
**********************************************
With practically every EU Member State with a coastline, or even the slightest commercial interest in fishing, represented on the Committee, Ireland, despite its physical ownership of over 15% of EU waters will have no representation in a group that will ultimately decide the future of the Irish fishing industry and who will have the final say in any changes to the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) that has dealt Ireland such injustice and inequality of quotas over the years.
How, for example, the EU Commission can justify a landlocked country such as Hungary a seat on this Fisheries Committee is questionable enough but awarding a small nation such as the Netherlands the same number of seats (and voting power in future Committee decisions) as the much larger EU Member State of France, and almost as many seats as Spain, raises many questions.
In a comparison of the two nations, the coastline of Ireland is 7,524 kilometres (4,675 miles) long while the Netherlands’ coastline is 451km (280 miles) and, in terms of land mass, the Netherlands is approximately 41,543 sq km, while Ireland is approximately 70,273 sq km, making Ireland 69% larger.
For Ireland, as the continental shelf extends far to the west and southwest, the larger of the two jurisdictions on the island has extensive seabed claims, exceeding 880,000 sq. km (340,000 sq mi), more than 10 times the land area.
The future - what future?
And so what can the Irish fishing industry hope to see if there comes any perceived ‘reformation’ of the EU system in a world where a ‘common’ fisheries policy has for decades turned a blind eye to the benefit for everyone to harvest their quotas in Irish waters but while Irish fishermen go out of business due to a lack of a fair EU quota?
With no Irish representation on a Committee largely populated with those who are currently gaining the most from a CFP designed to benefit the nations with the strongest representation on that same body then for Ireland the future looks very bleak indeed.
However, it must also be remembered that Ireland continues to suffer the failings of its own elected political parties at home who showed a distinct lack of interest in promoting their MEPs to sit on the fisheries committee but meanwhile went to great lengths to ensure that three of their Irish Euro Parliament members got seats on the EU Agricultural Committee. Such strategies say much about where the priorities lie for an Irish Government who have consistently shown a willingness to see Irish waters, the rich resource owned by the citizens of Ireland, be utilised by foreign fishing fleets.
The full list of new members is available in this link:
Comments