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Feisty EU fisheries commissioner Maria Damanaki is deadly serious about battling fish discards.But she doesn’t take herself too seriously. Instead of posting traditional photographs on her official website, she commissioned this series of light-hearted cartoons. |
The EU’s feisty fisheries commissioner, Maria Damanaki, opens up about discards, Hugh and going to “war” over mackerel Maria Damanaki’s office is almost comically inappropriate for a conversation about fishing.
Ensconced in the European Commission’s HQ in Brussels, it is a good 70 miles from the nearest major fishing port, its skyline cluttered with concrete and glass. When critics complain about out-of-touch bureaucrats meddling with the EU fishing industry, they probably imagine them sitting in offices just like Damanaki’s. Brussels on a grey March morning is certainly far removed from the EU fisheries commissioner’s own upbringing on Crete, where artisanal fishermen - not high-rises - used to dominate the landscape.
It’s a different world, but one which Damanaki clearly relishes and approaches with a healthy sense of humour. Instead of going for traditional photographs on her official website, for example, she has commissioned a series of light-hearted cartoons. “My portfolio - although it’s rather small - has a lot of interest in it,” she tells me. “It affects fishermen, consumers, labelling, external relations and internal relations, so it’s a challenge.”
And Damanaki likes a challenge. A one-time student activist, she was imprisoned in the 1970s for her opposition to the Greek dictatorship and became a figurehead of the popular uprising against the military junta after taking to the airwaves during a student revolt.
Almost 40 years on, as protector of the EU’s lucrative fish stocks, she faces a different kind of enemy. “The enemy is our irresponsible behaviour, the enemy is the quick profit, the ‘let’s go there and fish everything’ idea, thinking that something magical will happen at the end of the day and the fish are going to reproduce,” she bristles. “The enemy is this illusion that nature has unlimited resources.”
Damanaki’s key weapon against this kind of irresponsible behaviour is her package of reforms for the Common Fisheries Policy, which she put forward last July. It contains a wide range of proposals - from reducing fleet overcapacity to seafood marketing - but there is no doubt about her number-one priority: banning the discarding of juvenile, over-quota and non-quota fish. “It’s a flagship of our reform,” she says. Why? Because discards epitomise what’s gone wrong in the EU fishing industry in the past, Damanaki believes. “It’s something that goes beyond respect of resources,” she says. “It’s a wasteful practice - it’s not about respecting resources; it’s about destroying resources.” In fact, she adds, the practice of discarding fish at sea is so obviously wrong and provocative that it must be tackled immediately. “There is no excuse. That’s why this is a very emblematic issue.”
Damanaki’s urgency about discards comes as her CFP reform proposals are at a crossroads, with the Commission currently engaged in negotiations with the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. She is conscious such negotations inevitably mean compromise to appease those member states - such as France - who believe the proposals go too far, but is determined not to water them down. “Business as usual is not an option,” she says.
You can read her full interview with The Grocer’s Richard Ford here.
