Today’s European Parliament plenary vote has affirmed the immense step backwards proposed by the Fisheries Committee [1] to re-introduce environmentally harmful subsidies in the post-2020 fund for the maritime and fisheries sector (EMFF). The vote ensures public financial support for the purchase of new fishing vessels and the modernisation of older ones, increasing the EU fleet’s capacity to fish which, in some waters, is already much larger than sustainable fishing would allow [2]. The voting result simultaneously approves funding for the destruction of fishing vessels (a practice commonly known as ‘scrapping’), in a contradictory effort to combat overfishing. 

Ignacio Fresco Vanzini, Marine Policy Public Affairs Officer at WWF European Policy Office said: “The reintroduction of these harmful subsidies directly contradicts the EU’s commitments to end overfishing and support sustainable business models for its fishers, and will jeopardise the future of the very industry the subsidies were intended to support. No portion of the €6 billion of taxpayer money that comprise the EMFF should go toward practices that continue to endanger our already overexploited marine environment and threaten the future of Europe’s fisheries.”