The Councilor for Agriculture, Water, Livestock and Fisheries, Miguel Barrachina, along with representatives of the Balearic Islands, Murcia and Catalonia, has urged the Government of Spain“to defend the interests of fishermen of the Valencian Community in the face of Europe’s proposal to reduce fishing days from 133 to just 27 days a year“.
In a statement, Barrachina has also urged the Government to seek “the necessary support in Europe to block this decision that has not taken into account any economic, sociological or technical criteria“. In these terms has expressed the Minister of Agriculture after holding a working meeting, along with the director general of Fisheries of the Conselleria, Miguel Castell; the director general of Fisheries of the Balearic Islands, Antoni Grau; the director general of Agricultural Production, Livestock and Fisheries of Murcia, Juan Pedro Vera; and the director general of Maritime Policy and Sustainable Fisheries of Catalonia, Antoni Espanya. “The proposal of the European Union is disastrousbecause it leads to the closure of fishing in all Mediterranean ports. It is an ideological and radical initiative that prevents keeping these ports open,” said the Minister of Agriculture. In addition, Barrachina has stressed that it is“a great economic blow and also in terms of food because fresh fish in the Valencian Community will cease to exist and will have to consume only frozen fish“. “We are united to make a common front together with the fishermen of the different autonomous communities to prevent the implementation of this measure that would mean the end of trawling in our territories“, has clarified the conseller. In this sense, Barrachina has reported that “yesterday I sent a letter to the new European Commissioner for Fisheries and Oceans, Costas Kadis, in which I requested a meeting to discuss this situation and to explain, first hand, the importance of fishing for the economy of the Comunitat Valenciana and the negative consequences in jobs, direct and indirect, which can lead to this drastic measure.” The conseller has assured that “going from 133 to 27 days makes the survival of the fishing sector in the Comunitat Valenciana unfeasible because no one can work 27 days a year to survive all year.” “The fishing sector of the Valencian Community, with 483 vessels, is in serious danger of disappearing, because the scrapping of the 201 trawlers would be followed, irremediably, by the closure of almost all the fishermen’s associations and fish markets, since the fixed operating costs would be exclusively on the backs of the remaining vessels, which could not maintain a minimum of competitiveness,” he remarked.
