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It is impossible to assess how much of this aid goes to people employed in the fisheries sector. More information about the ESF can be found on the Employment DG's website at http://europa.eu.int/comm/employment_social/esf2000/doc_en.htm
The Pesca Community initiative
To cushion the worst effects of restructuring on regions dependent on fisheries, a special Pesca Community initiative was introduced in addition to the FIFG. Pesca combined several elements and sought to help the fisheries sector make a successful transition by diversifying fishermen's activities away from fishing and contributing to the diversification of coastal regions by developing new employment opportunities.
The Community contribution to Pesca was approximately ECU 260 million for the period 1994-1999.
Pesca, as with all Structural Fund interventions, requires joint financing by the Member State and, in some cases, by the private beneficiaries.
The Pesca initiative has ended but similar measures, such as aid to fishermen to help them retrain and diversify their activities outside marine fisheries and aid for the organisation of electronic trade and other information technologies to disseminate technical and commercial information, are now available under the FIFG.
Fisheries Agreements
The Community still has a large distant-water fleet which is important for a number of coastal regions. In order to gain access for its distant-water fleet to surplus fish in the waters of third countries which do not exploit them for various reasons, the Community negotiates and concludes fisheries agreements with these countries.
Fishing rights for EU vessels are conditional on financial payments by the Community.
These payments take the form of transfers to the authorities of the third country.
During the period 1994-1998 the Community budget provided ECU 281 million a year on average for these agreements.
A number of the agreements with ACP countries include so-called targeted actions, meaning that a proportion of the Community financial contribution is earmarked for measures such as developing the local fisheries sector, scientific-research facilities or monitoring and control capability. Table 4 shows the percentages for targeted measures under the various agreements as at the beginning of 1999.
Details regarding the financial compensation and the various conditions and obligations applying are published in the Official Journal of the European Communities.
Aid for research and inspection/monitoring
Research:
The management of marine resources calls for decisions based on scientific data. To promote fisheries research, the Commission provides funding for specific programmes that form part of Community frameworks intended to encourage scientific research in general.
In addition, the Commission may target funds to encourage scientific and technical studies, i.e. research projects on specific areas of relevance to the Common Fisheries Policy. The results can be applied directly for immediate management purposes.
Over the last ten years the funds available for such studies have been allocated through calls for proposals and have steadily increased.
They reached €20.9 million in 1999 (see Table 7). In 2000 a specific Regulation was adopted by the Council to allocate the bulk of these funds to the collection of basic data for assessing the state of EU fisheries.
Since 1983, the Community RTD (research and technological development) has been coordinated under multiannual framework programmes.
The Fourth Framework Programme, adopted in 1994 with a budget of ECU 12.3 billion, comprised 19 specific programmes, including the FAIR programme (research programme for agriculture and fishing, including the agri-food industry, forestry, aquaculture and rural development).
This programme aimed to use RTD to optimise the production and utilisation of biological raw material in Europe, for example by means of work on the impact of environmental factors on aquatic ressources, the ecological impact of fishing and aquaculture and the socio-economic aspects of the fishing industry.
Six calls for proposals were organised and resulted in the selection of 143 fisheries and aquaculture projects, plus 46 projects for SMEs (special measures for small and medium-sized enterprises), with financing of ECU 109 million, plus ECU 1.5 million for accompanying measures and ECU 6.4 million for scholarships.
In the current period (1998-2002) funds are available for research in fisheries under the "Quality of Life" part of the
Fifth Framework Programme.
By December 2000, projects approved numbered 32 for fisheries and aquaculture, with funding totalling €40.6 million, 13 for SMEs, with funding of €1.4 million, plus €0.76 million for accompanying measures and €0.49 million for scholarships.
Inspection and monitoring:
Since the inception of the CFP, the Council has adopted measures involving a Community financial contribution to inspection and monitoring tasks carried out by the Member States. Decision 95/527/EC on a Community financial contribution towards certain expenditure incurred by the Member States implementing the monitoring and control systems applicable to the CFP covered the following areas during the period 1996-2000: support for investments (i.e. nautical and technical inspection equipment) and support for integrated projects, such as pilot projects for satellite monitoring and training.
The total budget for these measures was ECU 205 million for the period 1996-2000. It is not yet possible to provide information concerning the refunds to the Member States for this period. As an illustration, however, one can refer to refunds in the period 1991-95 (see Table 5).
TABLES
Table 1: Shares of Community and national contributions to part-financed projects in the fisheries sector: 1994-1999 and 2000-2006 (pdf ~ 13 Kb)
Table 2: National contributions to structural aids to fisheries: 1994-1999: 1994-1999 (pdf ~ 12 Kb)
Table 3: FIFG aid by area of assistance: 1994-1998 (pdf ~ 13 Kb)
Table 4: Targeted measures in fisheries agreements with ACP countries: Situation at the beginning of 1999 (pdf ~ 9 Kb)
Table 5: Controls: Refunds for the period 1991-95 (pdf ~ 11 Kb)
Table 6: National financial transfers to the fisheries sector (excluding part-financing of Community aids): 1997 (pdf ~ 12 Kb)
Table 7: Research : Community Funds for scientific and technical studies in the fisheries sector 1994-1999 (pdf ~ 8 Kb)
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