Fishermen in the Balearic Islands describe Europe's proposal to limit trawling days as an insult.

PalmThe Balearic Federation of Fishermen's Associations (FBCP) has described the European Commission's proposal to limit the number of fishing days for trawlers as "insulting, immoral, and indecent." Given that the Director-General of the European Commission's DG MADRE, Charlina Vitcheva, acknowledged the sector's efforts over the past six years in adjusting activity levels and the resulting impact on fish stocks, the proposal "seems like yet another blow to a sector already struggling to keep its balance." According to the FBCP, the proposal jeopardizes the balance between biodiversity conservation, the social and economic interests of fishing, and European food sovereignty. At the national level, the proposal calls for a 65% reduction in the number of days allowed by 2025, which was 27. This would reduce the average fishing time per vessel to 9.5 days. According to the president of the Balearic Islands Fishermen's Federation (FBCP), Domingo Bonnín, the archipelago's fishing sector faces a proposal that would almost certainly make fishing activity unviable. In this regard, the federation points out that the traditional fishing boats known as "toro" account for 70% of the catches in the Balearic Islands and, as the federation has warned, without these boats, neither the marketing chain nor the fishermen's associations can be maintained. They also emphasized that since the implementation of the Western Mediterranean Multiannual Fisheries Plan in 2019, the sector has complied with the European Commission's requirements, reducing working days by 50% and closing fishing areas, among other measures. "The Commission considers all of this insufficient," they lamented, while noting that fish and crustacean populations have been observed to be fished at a sustainable rate for years. However, the sector has demanded the ability to return to working an average of 180 days per year and the removal of the catch limit for red shrimp.