DEAR EDITOR: On November 11th, Struan Stevenson, chairman of the European Parliament fisheries committee, says to Fishing News, that the suggestions from the EU commission and the recommendations from biologists are politically motivated. It is not the first time we read in Fishing News that the fishery administration and the low quotas are politically motivated. It is not novel to us in Denmark either - the chairman of the fishermen, Bent Rulle, says the same on every occasion he can find.

According to Stevenson, it is federalist agenda, and not the fishery biological and economical, which decides the development in the common European fishery policies. We in the Danish Society for a Living Sea believe that the like arguments of Stevenson’s are less than waterproof.

There is no doubt that there is a lot of politics in the common European fishery policies, but this is not without obvious reasons. We believe for instance that the much talk from EU commissioner of fisheries, Franz Fischler, about a total stop of cod fishery, has a clear address to the fishery trade and the national governments. In recent years, he has been overruled and threatened of being sacked after presenting the suggestions of the commission to the management of the European fishery in the coming years. You don't need to make a deep analysis of the common European fishery policies to understand that the commissioner is seriously tired of being held responsible of the problems by a council of ministers and a European fishery, which seem to care nothing of the serious problems, which the European fishery is now facing at full strength.

Here is the reasonable explanation to be found of what is going on at the moment. The ministers of the countries, and the big national fishery organizations, have not realized or do not want to realize the seriousness of this situation, and therefore they seek to explain to the practising fishermen and the European population that the commission and the biologists have another agenda of some "political" sort.

The EU common fishery policies have a political agenda, true enough, but it is an entirely open agenda, which we all should take seriously and discuss - there has to be created a more sustainable fishery. This agenda is without any doubt the political agenda in the EU, which has the highest level of reference to reality.

Kurt B. Christensen

Living Sea, Denmark