The European Union's fishing fleets should restructure rather than demanding aid to survive soaring fuel prices, the EU's executive said in a strongly-worded statement Thursday, according to dpa. "There is a future for European fisheries, but only if member states, the sector and the European Commission work together to create a smaller, more fuel-efficient fleet that is better matched to fishing possibilities," EU Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg said in a statement. Fishermen across Europe have been hard hit by soaring fuel prices, with commission figures saying that the price of marine diesel has shot up 240 per cent since 2004. But Borg rejected calls for fishermen to be allowed to catch more fish or to be given fuel subsidies, saying that the former option would be "completely counter-productive" and the latter would "do absolutely nothing" to solve the problem - besides being illegal. "Act now to restructure, but false solutions are not the way forward," he said. The commission, which is responsible for setting annual limits on the amount and type of fish which EU fishermen catch, has long had a stormy relationship with the industry. Fishermen regularly accuse the Brussels body of setting unfairly low quotas and overloading them with complex legislation. Environmentalists, on the other hand, accuse the commission of ignoring scientific advice and persistently allowing over-fishing. Borg's comments are unlikely to win him more friends in the fishing industry, although he did point out that fishermen can receive emergency aid from their national governments as long as they present credible restructuring plans. However, they confirm his stance that the~maK proble in~|rope's fisheries is that there are simply too many fishing boats in European waters, and that the industry must scale back to survive long-term.
