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Fishery management in the Channel of Sicily 415

2.2.1 Action Plan for the Mediterranean. In October 2002, the Commission sent a
document to Parliament and the Council—COM (2002) 535—concerning a Community
Action Plan for the conservation and sustainable exploitation of fisheries resources in the
Mediterranean Sea under the Common Fisheries Policy. The plan is based on the Barcelona
system, which proposed an initial plan of action for the Mediterranean in 1975, although
the issues dealt with concerned the environmental rather than those of preserving fishing
resources (this latter point was referred to the General FAO Council for the Mediterranean,
GFCM). Nearly 30 yr later, the issues surrounding fisheries in ‘Mar Nostrum’ have expanded
and now take place within a political arena that has changed considerably.

The new Action Plan initially lays out some specific points about the Mediterranean, namely
(a) the limited area of national waters compared with international waters, which has led to
a substantial lack of EEZ, (b) the relative importance of common and trans-zonal stock,
(c) the traditional/artisanal nature of fishing leading to limited capital investment, (d) the
limited scientific partnership between institutions working on the problems of fishing resources
management, and (e) competition, especially at certain times of year, between commercial
and sport fishing. Regarding the stock levels of some pelagic and demersal species, the plan
highlights the need to reduce the fishing effort by 15–30%, and to adopt types of management
that avoid exceeding the safety limits of some stock.

If, on the one hand, the scientific community feels the need to include a specific course of
action by the CFP in the Mediterranean sea, on the other hand it cannot be denied that ‘Mare
Nostrum’ requires ad hoc measures, different from those required by continental oceans and
by the Atlantic. Therefore, if the objectives are to be referred to the EC, the management of
maritime activity should involve different institutions according to the specific type of fish
under consideration. In the case of highly migratory species, fishing should be handled by the
EC together with the GFCM and ICCAT; in the case of common fishing, it should be subject to
community/international regulation with agreed measures coming from GFCM and with the
help of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC); finally, in the case of the fishing of species
present in national waters, fishing should continue to be managed on a national level.

Indeed, in the Commission’s proposal, the most relevant topics regarding fishing in the
Mediterranean are considered, from international policy to restricting levels of fishing effort,
from the protection of fishing resources at risk to increasing scientific research—a necessary
corollary to regulate the evolutionary process of common policy for fisheries.

In order to clarify the European Commission’s chosen line of policy, the aims, strategies,
and those involved in the European action plan are explained in the following section.

In October 2003, the Commission presented a whole series of management measures to
deal with the causes of over-fishing, with reference to unsustainable fishing methods practised
in the Mediterranean. The proposal is based on existing measures but also puts forward new
measures, such as the progressive enlargement of mesh size, the enforcement of vetoes on
certain trawling activities in order to protect juveniles, specific initiatives regarding swordfish,
an improvement in the checking system, and the division of management responsibilities
among the Union and its member states.

In spite of the effort made by the Commission to gather consensus on the proposal, the
organization of conferences on Mediterranean fishing (Venice 2003) and the creation of a
trans-mediterranean association of fisheries, Medisamak (May 2004), the normative process
has not yet been completed (at the time of writing). The European Commission is, however,
reluctant to withdraw the proposal for new Mediterranean Regulations containing new tech-
nical measures for fishing, a proposal which, nevertheless, has been refused by the European
Parliament, by the Social and Economic Committee, and by various fishing Associations.
These latter groups claim that the revision of technical measures was just one of the many
areas of intervention that should be in the Mediterranean Plan, together with development of