Efficacité d'un outil de politique structurelle dans le secteur des pêches : le plan Mellick

In order to comply with the requirements of the second Multiannual Guidance Plan concerning the fishing fleets in the EEC Member Countries, the French Secretary of State for the sea has implemented a decommissionning scheme in March 1991. To facilitate the withdrawal of an overall engine power representing 100000 kW, subsidies have been attributed to owners scaping their boat of selling it outside the EEC or for a purpose other than fishing. In parallel social measures were set to help the resignation or the retirement of skippers. In March 1992 applications concerning 975 vessels representing about 84 300 kW had been presented. Brittany accounts for 48.5 % of the boats and 43 % of the withdrawn power whereas the mediterranean ports represent only 9 % of the power. The bulk of the candidates (94 %) apply for scraping and 85 % are vessels under 12 meters with a limited power and about 75 % are older than 20 years. Among skippers no significant differences appear in the age classes, leading to the conclusion that the plan was not an incentive for an early retirement. Conversely the subsidies provided by the government, the regions and departments had a stimulating effect on the withdrawal of power although the regions having the largest fleets are not the main contributors in terms of percentage of their fleet. An attempt has been made to assess the effects of the plan on the fisheries resources. The main yearly fishing time of the candidates in the year prior to the plan was 8.2 months and only 59 boats were not active. The multigear vessels represent 38.4 % of the candidates which stem from the fact that small vessels fish in the coastal zone all year long on different species in succession (elvers, bass, bivalves, crustaceans...). Trawlers appear in the second place but this group is heterogeneous with vessels under 10 m fishing along the coast and vessels above 28 m fishing in the Celtic sea and West of the British isles. The actual impact on fish stocks is almost impossible to assess for several reasons. In some areas an important part of the vessels concerned were not selling their catches on official markets and there exist no records of their landings. For the boats which were involved in international fisheries it would have been necessary to know the evolution of the fishing effort of the remaining boats. Based on existing landings statistics the production of the decommissionned boats was estimated to represent 6 to 8 % of the overall landings of the French fleet. Even in the absence of a proper assessment, the reduction of the number of trawlers operating in the coastal areas with small mesh nets on the nurseries of flatfish is likely to have a beneficial effect. In the case of scallop fisheries and some elver fisheries whith are regulated by a licensing system the reduction of the fishing effort stemming from the decommissionning scheme should also result in an improvement of the productivity of the remaining boats provided their effort remains stable. [NOT CONTROLLED OCR]