The president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, committed a few days ago, during a visit to the fish market in the port of Tarragona, to promote an aid program for the Catalan fishing sector, and today that promise reaches the Senate, where the absolute majority of the popular group will approve a motion that includes the claims expressed by the fishermen.
Specifically, the PP initiative alludes to the critical situation that the fishing sector is experiencing and the threats that hang over its competitiveness, which have caused the Spanish fishing fleet, and particularly the Catalan one, to have been reduced by almost half in twenty years. In the Tarragona port, for example, from the 1,337 vessels there were two decades ago, there have been 617 today.
In the motion, signed by the spokesperson of the popular group in the Upper House, Alicia García, the PP regrets the decrease in the active population of the fishing sector, which is also increasingly older due to the lack of generational replacement due to the lack of prospects of the future and the uncertainty surrounding fishing as a way of life for shipowners and fishermen.
To reverse this situation, which the PP attributes largely to the regulatory restrictions of the common fisheries policy of the European Union, the need to promote modernization of the fleet, which has a high number of small companies that see limitations their possibilities of investing to reconvert the ships and their equipment through the application of new technologies.
"The Mediterranean fleet, traditionally focused on coastal and coastal fishing, with smaller companies, is very old," reads the text of the motion, which also points to the problems that exist in external fishing grounds and the imposition of quotas. community as a factor of unfair competition from non-EU countries such as Morocco or Canada.
"The extension of exclusive economic zones to 200 miles by the coastal states of the fishing grounds where Spanish vessels fish has harmed the Spanish fleet," recalls the PP, which denounces that this circumstance has caused a serious crisis and has contributed to the reduction of the fleet, "in addition to forcing Spain to reach agreements with said states."
For all these reasons, the PP motion in the Senate endorses the demands of the Catalan fishing sector, which criticizes the excess of bureaucracy and the "distortion in state and European regulations", and demands that the Government of Spain recognize "the of fishing for quality and sustainable food" and the restrictions are put to an end until the impact of the existing ones is evaluated, "whose imposition on different gears (such as trawling) has already lasted for too many years".
In this sense, legislation is requested taking into account not only scientific evidence but also the opinions of fishermen, the "main stakeholders in the recovery of marine ecosystems", and greater control of imports in terms of legality is demanded. , the quality and sustainability of fish of foreign origin that reaches Spanish markets, for which labeling is proposed that guarantees the traceability of the value chain.
In addition to requesting that border inspections be increased, the PP echoes another claim reiterated by the sector, such as allowing the capture of bluefin tuna, since "overpopulation - it is argued - of this species poses a serious risk." for the Mediterranean marine ecosystem by seriously threatening bluefish populations.
Another measure included in the motion, in an economic key, is the reduction of VAT - from 10% to 4% - for fish, which, along with meat and preserved foods, has been a continuous claim by Feijóo to make consumers' shopping basket cheaper after a long period in which inflation has taken its toll on the economy of Spanish households.
