Bill Newton Dunn MEP seeks to reassure local anglers

4.33.42pm GMT Wed 4th Feb 2009

Bill Newton Dunn says anglers will not be affected by the EU ban

The EU Commission has issued a proposal for EU legislation about Conservation of Fish stocks - but has worded it badly, so that it has created alarm among some British onshore anglers.

The Commission's proposal mentions controls over "recreational fishing" - by which they had in mind controls over fishermen who catch rare tuna fish from leisure boats in the Mediterranean and then sell them for profit. But, if the wording is not improved, the proposal would accidentally include local British anglers sitting peacefully by river-sides who either eat their catch or return it to the pond or river.

The European Parliament will certainly improve the wording of the control proposal when it votes on the point in April. But, with two months still to go, ripples of alarm may spread more widely before then.

The final decision will be made in June by the EU upper chamber, the Council of 27 national Fishery ministers. Fisheries are one of the policy areas over which the Council still has a whip hand because the parliament (the EU's lower chamber) has only a single reading, which is not enough to force a dialogue between MEPs and ministers. The Lisbon Treaty, if and when passed, will give the parliament two readings, and therefore equal control with ministers over Fisheries, Agriculture, and Justice and Home Affairs policies.

Speaking from Strasbourg today, Bill Newton Dunn, MEP for the East Midlands, said: "I want to re-assure all local anglers that this EU proposal will not be allowed to include them."