The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, said he expects to confirm an increase for Spain of 650 tons of fishing quota for the «precious species» of bluefin tuna if the proposal is approved at the meeting of the plenary session of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), which is held on Monday afternoon.
This was indicated by the minister on Monday in Brussels, where he has moved to participate in the meeting of the Ministers of Agriculture and Fisheries of the European Union (EU).
Planas added that, if this quota increase of 650 tons is confirmed, which is almost 10% of the total Spanish quota, the total quota of bluefin tuna for Spain will be 6,800 tons in 2023.
The quota allocated to Spain, the European country that fishes the most tuna, was 6,093 tons in 2022 and 6,107 tons in 2021.
PROPOSAL OF QUOTAS OF THE COMMISSION At the same time, Spain is studying the proposed fishing quotas that the European Commission will take to the next Council on this matter, scheduled for 12 and 13 December, and that, as revealed Planas, «seems to be better than last year» but has appealed to caution, because «we must not be confident» until there is no agreement.
Planas, who highlighted his role as «negotiator», warned that the debate «will be complex» and that the ministers will have «three days to talk and two nights, as Sabina would say».
«Everything is going very fast,» said the minister, while recalling that 8 days ago the Spanish Government presented before the Court of Justice the appeal for annulment against the Implementing Regulation 2022/1614 of the European Commission that prohibits fishing in 87 areas of the Atlantic shelf in depths between 400 and 800 meters, considered as vulnerable marine ecosystems.
In this sense, Planas has assured that he has an open dialogue with both the Commission and the European Commissioner for the Environment, Virginijus Sinkevicius, to whom he does not hide that Spain is «the first Community fishing fleet», which implies that it has «very diverse and important interests» and that «the mission of the minister is to defend them».
TRANSITION OF THE FLEET On the other hand, with regard to the decarbonization of the fishing fleet, Planas has indicated that he would oppose to set a deadline for vessels to stop using diesel engines if there was not «a good alternative technique available».
«We are in an accelerated process of ecological transition but that does not mean that we have to do things simply because there is a deadline, but we must do them when a technique is available,» he concluded.
