After years of overfishing fish a group of wealthy fishermen switched to fishing for subsidies.
The madness of taxpayers money being shifted from productive to too often unproductive and often illegal uses is shown by Greenpeace’s excellent report on where fishing subsidies in Spain are going. You can read it @
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/oceans/exposed-organised-crime-sea-20111002
Tens of millions of our euros has gone to finance a fisheries powerhouse. A Spanish firm whose track record of illegal fishing is infamous. And, to this day, has the seeming protection of both conservative and socialist politicians in Madrid and Galicia.
Fishing subsidies have in the main been an abject failure. When used to decommission old vessels, fishermen have often been paid to take decrepit vessels out of the sea, often selling near scrap for a lot more than than they could get on the market.
Governments, industry and even NGOs have been wedded to the idea of subsidies. They all hope they can reform the subsidy regale so that one day the system can work. I doubt that day will come. In over 16 years working on fisheries policy, I have yet to find a subsidy that has worked that well.
An easy way to reduce the amount of vessels in the sea – there is over 50% too many fishing vessels in the EU’s waters – is to allow the market to do it. Denmark and Norway introduced forms of private property rights to address the deal with overcapacity. Their experiment saw to healthier fish stocks and healthier profits for fishermen.
Governments in Europe have to ditch their central planning impulses. Those vikings have some good ideas.