27 January 2003
Italy The Spanish fishing fleet has lost the European leadership, measured in power. Now it is Italy –one of the countries that have not yet complied with the reduction objectives market by the European Union- who is the leading fishing fleet of Europe.
In the beginning of 1997, the Spanish vessels summed 1.5 million kilowatts, while the Italian vessels remained at 1.4 million. Presently, the fleet fishing with the Italian flag has reached 1.312.797 kilowatts compared to the 1.288.236 of Spain.
Italy is now also second in Europe when measuring the fleet by its number of vessels. In 1998, Spain held second place as it had 1.547 more boats than Italy.However, in June last year, the Spanish fleet consisted of 15,380 boats, while Italy registers 16,380 vessels according to the Italian census. This situation has therefore been reversed, as Italy now has 1.314 boats than the Spanish fleet.
Greece remains at the top, holding the European leadership on number of small vessels: 20,151 boats form its fleet. Still, Greece with 634,921 kilowatts, however Greece only reaches half the power Spain does.
The reason for Spain’s loss of fishing fleet power can be attributed to the different degree of fulfillment with the EU policy of fleet capacity reduction. Whereas Spain has complied with all the reduction objectives of the seven segments of identified fleet, Italy has adjusted tonnage in only eight of the eleven segments and, in power, it has only covered the objectives in seven of those eleven types of vessels.
