Time to discard Damanaki

One of the many troubles plaguing the European Union, is the selection of their unelected officials. Once in place, they police on dossiers on which they combine the intellectual laziness of the urban-socialist with a perfect lack of practical knowledge. To maximize civilian, economic and ecological damage, they overcompensate mentioned disabilities with the secular evangelism of ´saving the earth´. The goal in their policy-doctrines: to win their own war to end all wars, by firing their silver bullet that leaves their mark on the world.

The Reform to end all Reforms
So much more for former Greek Communist-party member Maria Damanaki, also regarded as ‘the Gucci-communist’: for combining her elite urban lifestyle, with 19th century ideas on economic revolution and being mentally immune to it’s century-long historical rebuttal.

By some Eurocratic accident, ‘Maria the Red’ happened to land on the longstanding dossier of the Common Fisheries Policy, CFP, with a ‘reform to end all reforms’. To reach the utopia of the ill defined ´sustainability´. The fact that fisheries are there for thousands of years is not sustainable to the greens that define this utopia.

Silver Bullet of landing bycatch, rebranded as ´discard´
In Damanaki’s CFP the proletarians have been replaced by the ‘ecosystems under pressure’, with the enemy remaining as evil and unchanged as ever: capitalist exploitation. Her silver bullet for the five year plan: a ban on bycatch in fisheries. Which to her is ‘at the heart of the CFP-reform’. Bycatch-rebranded ´discards´ by green activists to make it sound more of an ethical question- is a problem that the same CFP of the EU itself formerly stimulated through their distribution of quota.

Landing all bycatch by obligation is a silver bullet that – by ignoring fisheries differing practices through it’s 22 member states, economic viability and the law of unintended consequences- is prone to do more damage then good. The question i pose here is, whether we need more do-gooders after the damage has been done.

Success in the US
For the sake of fisheries, there are many effective counterexamples, that show endemic troubles in CFP need not be ecological, nor the fishermen’s fault, though they share responsibility. Countries like the United States have been succesfull in last decade in curbing problems with overfishing, removing more stocks from the ‘overfished’list every year.

Their not so revolutionary‘secret’: combining scientific stock assessments, advice from biologists ánd fisheries policies based in local practice. Effectiveness of restrictive policies on stocks enhances cooperation of fishermen. A practice countries like Norway have been familiar with, and nations like New Zealand. There are no ‘one size fits all stocks’-measures and silver bullets, which do however serve the unelected bureaucrat in it’s term in office in Brussels.

The problem of CFP that is CFP
The contrast of US-policies with the CFP- putting al different national fisheriespractices through one bureaucratic blender– could not be greater. Troubles in the CFP have been traditional for decades: Multinational bureaucracies and their policies serve the law of unintended consequences, amplified by national self-interest. So CFP, combines both the heavily lobbied interests of all member states national fisheries, green activist’s long standing wishes for Green Utopia Under Water, added with a touch of Damanaki’s need for leaving her mark in Brussels.

Last and least: a watered down scientific advice from fisheries biologists, from an institute ICES that year after year becomes more contaminated by the green doctrine of ‘saving the sea’.

The world is bad, so we need more do-gooders…
The troubles of de European Bureaucratic Union are similar to that of green campaigning multinationals like Greenpeace- now protesting in Brussels in the suit of a fish against ´greedy industry´and other clichés serving their fundraising.

By advocating ideology, top down uneconomical restrictions, dead-end impractical technologies, subsidizing inefficiency, they enhance top down bureaucracy- leading to a self-fulfilling worldview, that in their minds can only lead to one conclusion: the world is bad, so we need more of us.
Like Brussels bureaucrats and Europarlementarians longing to ´save the earth´/ the whole ocean, u, campaigning multinationals are selfserving, with existential and financial interest in maintaining ‘the problem’, which is their profession.

Discarding Damanaki and her kin
It is relevant to note, that countries like New Zealand, and to some extent Canada, that have more succesfull fisheries policies have also removed Greenpeace of the ‘charity’list. Might this be part of a more realistic way of green thinking? Also note the stance of Greenpeace- founder who left the organisation ecologist Patrick Moore on fisheries.

It is time first for European countries to discard groups, persons and institutes that do not seek a solution, but seek Salvation.

The Eurotopian project for too long has attracted Damanaki-like do-gooders that mostly serve their selfinterest in saving the earth and striving for Utopia. So for those who actually have the intention of making fisheries more modern, rational and ecologic, one suggestion might be to learn from the many good examples around the globe, based on biology instead of ideology .

When adopting biology-based fisheries aimed at effectiveness in local practice, one conclusion might then be that the CFP needs not a reform to end all reforms, but it’s termination.