France, with 90 boats, joins the almost 60 in Ireland due to the lack of quotas | The veto on bottom fishing leads Galician shipowners to request aid to leave the sector
The strong impact that was felt in the irish and french ports with the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union under the so-called Brexitmore than three years ago, it will claim almost 150 ships – concentrated in both countries – that the Twenty-seven will lose over the next few months. Both Paris and Dublin have approved in recent days and weeks each aid to scrap 90 and 57 fishing boats respectively, as a consequence of the loss of quotas that they experienced with the British march. Measure, in a context of irreparable damage, It is already seen by some Galician shipowners as the only solution to the disastrous effects that the veto on bottom fishing promoted by the European Commission (EC) is causing here. Some of them recently demanded it in statements to FARO, seeking to extrapolate the aforementioned model to the Galician coast: “It is the only thing we have left and it is what we are asking for. If the fleet is reduced, maybe someone is interested in staying. The other way we all die & rdquor ;.
The truth is that while France and Ireland will subsidize with 145 million the low of these ships – in the case of Macron’s country, the majority linked to the Brittany region -, For now, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has not ruled on whether said aid will finally be granted, how much they will amount to, or to which vessels they will be directed… Among other issues.
“We have to study each type of fishing, see how their situation is and plan the possible scrapping & rdquor ;, insisted last July the general director of Fisheries and Aquaculture Management, Ignacio Gandarias, at the “IX ARVI International Conference on the Future of Fishing”, organized by the Vigo Shipowners Cooperative and in which its managing director, Edelmiro Ulloa, indicated that Vigo shipowners alone would need support worth 30.5 million for the scrapping of a computation of 22 ships.From the Xunta, For its part, the Consellería do Mar highlighted yesterday –responding to questions from this newspaper– that “aid for the movement of vessels is a measure to take into account to restructure the sector in difficult circumstances such as the veto on bottom fishing established by the European Commission& rdquor; although he defends that the priority must be “to make decisions and have more ambitious measures and conditions so that the fleet can be profitable and guarantee its viability so that the displacements are the fewer the better& rdquor ;.“It is not a question of amounts of aid, but rather of making different aspects related to the management of the fleet more flexible to take advantage of the tonnage, propulsive power of heights and incidentally promote its sustainability & rdquor ;, qualified the department headed by Rosa Quintana, advocating for measures “that favor generational change& rdquor; and noting that it works “to minimize the displacement of ships as much as possible & rdquor; since 2009, “When there was a proposal to move more than 90 ships and it was reduced by around a third& rdquor ;.