But the actual quotas are fixed every Christmas by national ministers in a sleepless, two-day marathon.The annual fisheries council (this year's begins on December 17th) is described by one official as "the sickest thing about the CFP".
But Ann and Stona Fitch, the genii behind CFP, clue me in from time to time about the total amount CFP has raised in one year.
The CFP may be flawed, but if countries parcelled out the fish among themselves there would be none left, says one official.
THERE is a lot of talk in the air, just now, about the madness of the European Union's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), and how its strict quota system forces British trawlermen to throw vast quantities of fish back into the sea, dead.
Now, though trawler fuel is tax-free in the EU (a walloping subsidy, by the way), high oil prices make some trawlers uneconomical every time they leave port.The EU, meaning Brussels bureaucrats, knows the CFP is crazy.
That challenges the principle of "relative stability" that governs the CFP, under which the share of fish stocks doled out to each country is meant to remain stable in relative terms.
As happens on such programmes, Mr F-W went out on a trawler with some gruff but friendly fishermen, who told him how it broke their hearts to throw perfectly edible cod back into the sea.The programme noted, correctly, that this is appallingly wasteful, and that the CFP is working very badly.
The British government has wanted CFP reform for years, but British ministers calling for reform are ten-a-penny in the EU, and their arguments are undermined by the ferocity of the Eurosceptic camp back home.
Because enforcing the CFP is largely a job for national governments.
There are some big important countries that know the CFP is broken, and that the whole system needs to change.
