• Hit refresh or the auto-update button for the latest posts • Send your thoughts to paul.doyle@guardian.co.uk 6 min: Wambach meets an American corner at the back post but, under pressure from two defenders, can’t get proper contact on it and her awkward header poses no threat. 5 min: It’s been a promising start by France, who seems determind to carry on their enterprising style. They’ve been the more lively and inventive so far but the Americans are tough and well-organised and keeping chances to a minimum. Or zero, to be exact. 3 min: The crowd is big but quiet so far – which means we can hear the players’ calls and yelps. Let’s hope that doesn’t give rise to lots of boring complaints like the ones that proliferate around Wimbledon. 1 min: France get the game under way. It doesn’t take the US long to win the ball off them, but they make poor use of it, hoofing long to the French keeper. 4:58pm: It looks like a bumper crowd in Monchengladbach and face-paint vendors appear to have been doing a roaring trade. Preamble Break out those liberty fries, folks, burn them baguettes and bury your berets – yes, we know you have berets – because it’s the United States against France for a shot at world domination. You must be either with one or against one. No, wait, that’s not right – there is a third way: you can tune in just to enjoy a high-quality, high-stakes game of football. Spoilsport. Americans love an underdog, it’s said, so everyone stateside will presumably be supporting the French, who have none of the US’s pedigree in this tournament nor their No1 world ranking and, as their manager Bruno Bini, pointed out yesterday, have far fewer players to call on than their counterparts (“we have 60,000 registered female players, they have 2.5 million so there is a better chance of them finding 21 good players than we do,” he explained, moments after barfing . Coincidentally, most people in France will also be supporting France – and we really mean most people: the hitherto neglected national women’s team has caught the public’s imagination because, according to the Le Parisien, perhaps making an implicit comparison to the country’s men’s team, “they don’t cheat, they play; they don’t take themselves for stars and they have a charismatic coach” (whose pre-match pep-talks, incidentally, often include him reciting poetry or breaking into song). Both sides came through taut thrillers in the last round. Who will prevail today? Teams France: Sapowicz, Georges, Meilleroux, Soubeyrang, Bompastor, Abily, Lepailleur, Necib, Bussaglia, Thiney, Delie Subs: Deville, Renard, Boulleau, Franco, Le Sommer, Thomis, Pizzala, Bretigny, Viguier, Phillipe USA: Solo, Rampone, Sauerbrunn, Lepeilbet, Boxx, Rodriguez, O’Reilly, Lloyd, Krieger, Cheney, Wambach Subs: Mitts, O’Hara, Morgan, Cox, Rapinoe, Lindsey, Heath. Barnhart, Loyden, Buehler. Ref: K Heikkinen (Finland, which reminds me of this magnificent opus Women’s World Cup 2011 Women’s football Paul Doyle guardian.co.uk
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Cryptic wood white revealed as annual Big Butterfly Count is launched A new species of butterfly previously unknown to science has been discovered flying in Northern Ireland. The cryptic wood white looks exactly the same as both the Réals wood white and the wood white, a delicate and increasingly rare insect found in English woodlands in summer. But scientists have discovered it is in fact a unique species that has far more chromosomes, different DNA and genetically is 70,000 years old – far older than the two other species. “It’s a very exciting discovery. We are going to have to rewrite the butterfly books,” said Martin Warren, chief executive of Butterfly Conservation . The discovery comes as the charity launches the world’s largest count of butterflies, the Big Butterfly Count, encouraging everyone to spend 15 minutes on a sunny day between 16 July and 31 July recording all the butterflies they spot in their garden, park or nearby countryside. Last year 10,000 people in the UK downloaded free identification guides and submitted sightings of 189,000 butterflies online at www.bigbutterflycount.org . Sir David Attenborough , the president of Butterfly Conservation, said butterflies rarely visited his suburban garden any more and the count was crucial to understand how and why butterflies were in decline. “I saw one peacock in my garden last year and that was a big day for me. I’ve even got to the stage where I welcome cabbage whites. They lift the heart but they are also crucial to the survival of British wildlife – for the birds that feed on their caterpillars and for pollinating flowers. If my heart is not going to be lifted by a butterfly because they’ve gone, my life is going to be much the poorer.” The count is being funded by Marks & Spencer with the retailer filling the breach left by an 85% cut in Butterfly Conservation’s funding from Natural England , the government’s conservation body, which is shedding 800 staff in the public sector cuts. As well as providing crucial information on common butterflies suffering steep declines, including the small tortoiseshell and the meadow brown, the information submitted by butterfly lovers could help solve other mysteries in the butterfly world – and find more cryptic species, which are so called because they are identical to existing species and therefore hidden within them. The cryptic wood white, which has the scientific name of Leptidea juvernica, was discovered by Spanish and Russian scientists who identified the new species across a swath of central Europe, including Germany, Romania and Northern Ireland. Mysteriously, it does not occur in Great Britain, where the wood white is one of our most endangered species. For the last 10 years in Northern Ireland the cryptic wood white was believed to be the Réal’s wood white, another so-called cryptic species which was only discovered in Europe in 1988. The cryptic wood white and Real’s wood white differ from the wood white found in Britain in one important aspect: the males have much larger genitalia, leading to the nickname “long-willied wood white” in Northern Ireland. Richard Fox of Butterfly Conservation said the discovery was important because it helped conservationists understand the distribution of rare insects and which species should be a conservation priority. “The fact that there have been two species hiding within the wood white is exciting,” said Fox. “It also begs the question of what else is out there?” Butterflies Wildlife Insects Northern Ireland Patrick Barkham guardian.co.uk
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US president’s 2012 bid sails past $60m target for last quarter, easily eclipsing the efforts of Republican contenders Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has exceeded its $60m fundraising target for the past three months, bringing in $86m from April to June and eclipsing his Republican contenders. Officials for Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign said it had received funds from more than 552,000 people, representing “more grassroots support at this point in the process than any campaign in political history”. In keeping with the president’s 2008 winning strategy of targeting small donations, 98% of contributions in the second quarter of this year were $250 (£157) or less, with an average donation of around $69, campaign manager Jim Messina said in a video to supporters. The figures confirm that Obama, who raised a record $745m during his 2008 bid, has started the 2012 race as the cash leader despite criticism from some Democrats that he has tilted to the right in US debt talks and worries about the economy. The Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney raised $18.25m from April to June, and most of his party’s hopefuls for the White House raised between $4m and $4.5m during the same period. Romney’s rival Michele Bachmann is due to announce her fundraising total for last quarter this week. Of the total raised for Obama during that period, more than $47m went to the Obama for America fund and more than $38m to the Democratic National Committee. US elections 2012 Barack Obama Democrats Michele Bachmann Mitt Romney Republicans United States US politics US elections 2008 guardian.co.uk
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Schools have put in place plans to restrict pupils’ GCSE choices as a direct result of the introduction of the new benchmark, a seminar has heard Teenagers are being given limited GCSE options and forced to switch courses midway as schools try to boost their scores in the new English baccalaureate (Ebacc), it has been claimed. In some cases, youngsters are being asked to change a year or less before they are due to sit exams, it was suggested. And almost half of schools have put in place plans to restrict pupils’ GCSE choices as a direct result of the Ebacc’s introduction. The education secretary, Michael Gove, introduced the Ebacc at the end of last year, and the measure is now included in league tables – allowing schools to be rated on the proportion of their pupils achieving the benchmark. To achieve the Ebacc, pupils must score at least a C grade in English, maths, science, a foreign language and either history or geography. But a seminar on the Ebacc and the national curriculum has heard that other subjects such as art, drama, music and religious education are being squeezed out, with more pressure being put on pupils to take those that are included. David Peck, director of the Curriculum Foundation, said that while some schools have opted to stick with their curriculum, others are changing it to fit with the Ebacc. “Some will change GCSEs mid-year. That’s certainly happening in a number of schools,” he said. He added that choices for pupils year 10 (the first year of GCSE study) are changing “very late”, while the options available for those starting GCSE courses this year have also altered. Speaking after the seminar, Peck added: “Some of the current year 11s [second year of GCSE study] have had to switch GCSE courses in some schools, that’s true.” In many cases, pupils have been asked to change so that they can take a language. Asked how long these pupils then have to study the course, Peck said: “A year or less in many cases.” Other schools are laying on “twilight” courses after school. Shadow schools secretary Andy Burnham, who arranged the seminar, said afterwards: “The danger is it puts the interests of the school above the interests of the individual.” In a survey of more than 2,400 teachers, conducted by the NASUWT teaching union, 43% say their school had planned to restrict the degree of choice 14-year-olds have over their GCSE options as a direct result of the Ebacc being introduced. NASUWT spokesman Chris Weavers told the seminar that those questioned had at the same time seen reductions in time spent on subjects not included in the Ebacc. In design and technology 17% had seen a reduction, 15% in information and computer technology, 13% each in art, music and drama, 12% in citizenship, 11% in personal, social, health and economic education, and 10% in religious education. “Schools are either stopping subjects or reducing curriculum time,” Weavers said. “There’s very clear evidence that it’s distorting the offer.” Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, chair of the Accord Coalition, said: “We have got a policy of freedom of choice, but in reality it’s a diminution of choice.” Peter Hall Jones, chief executive of the Curriculum Foundation, said: “It’s a bad Bacc.” Brian Lightman, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the union had heard of pupils being asked to switch courses. “We are extremely concerned about it, ” he said. “It’s an inevitable consequence of creating a new performance indicator and judging schools against it. “What schools should be doing is considering what’s the most appropriate curriculum for their pupils. But, unfortunately, the nature of the high stakes accountability culture that we have at the moment is putting schools under enormous pressure to meet targets.” Lightman added: “There seems to be a worrying trend towards removing choice from young people at 14. I think that’s very dangerous in terms of motivating young people to choose subjects that play to their own strengths.” According to official figures, 15.6% of pupils in England, around one in six, achieved the Ebacc last summer. GCSEs English baccalaureate Schools guardian.co.uk
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Another two jails will be closed, saving £11.4m a year for Kenneth Clarke’s justice department, which faces a 23% cut Two prisons will be closed and nine more put out to competition in a mass privatisation programme, the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has announced. The prison closures include the much-praised resettlement jail, Latchmere House, in Richmond, west London, and Brockhill prison near Redditch, a 1960s prison building now in a poor state, which first opened as a remand centre and has at different times been both a women’s and a men’s prison. Their closure will save £4.9m this year and produce an ongoing saving of £11.4m a year for Clarke’s justice department, which faces a 23% budget cut. The decision to put nine prisons up for competition – including the Wolds, which is already run by the private security company G4S – is potentially the largest single privatisation programme in the history of the prison service in England and Wales. It is possible that some jails may remain in the public sector after bids are invited later this autumn. The last round of competition in March saw four prisons put up for tender and one, Buckley Hall, stayed in the public sector. The largest, Birmingham prison, is to be taken over by G4S. The muted response to that decision by the Prison Officers’ Association is likely to have been a factor in Wednesday’s announcement that a further nine jails are to be market-tested. The list includes HMP Lindholme, HMP Moorland and HMP Hatfield, all in Doncaster; HMP Wolds in East Yorkshire, which was the first private prison in Britain; HMP Acklington and HMP Castington, both near Morpeth in Northumberland; HMP Durham; HMP Onley near Rugby; and HMP Coldingley near Bisley, Surrey, which is a purpose-built training prison. Already 12 of the existing 138 jails are run by the private sector. A further four new prisons are already earmarked to be built and run by the private sector. If the private security sector succeeds in taking over eight of the nine prisons now being put for tender – and that is not a foregone conclusion – they will have 15% of the prisons “market” in England and Wales. Private security companies have long campaigned to create a viable private prison sector in England and Wales and this competition round could prove the tipping point they have craved. The justice ministry says decisions about which prisons were selected for competition or closure were based on a wide range of criteria, including potential for improvement and innovation, and not just on the basis of the poorest performers. The closure of Latchmere House and Brockhill will mean a reduction of 377 places in prison capacity in England and Wales. The capacity is to be replaced by new jails providing 2,500 extra places this year. Two other small prisons, Lancaster Castle and Ashwell, were closed earlier this year. Latchmere House has a long history, which includes a period when it was called Camp 020 and was MI5′s secret wartime interrogation centre where German agents were “broken” and some turned into double agents. More than 500 spies are thought to have passed through Latchmere House during the war. Clarke said: “The public have a right to expect continuing improvement in the quality and efficiency of public services, without compromising public safety. The competition strategy and adjustments to the prison estate will help ensure that this is the case.” Prisons and probation Privatisation Kenneth Clarke UK criminal justice Public sector cuts Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
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Judge to look into arrests of Ratcliffe-on-Soar environmental campaigners and undercover policeman’s surveillance tapes A leading former judge has been appointed to lead an expanded inquiry into claims that prosecutors suppressed secret surveillance tapes recorded by undercover police officer Mark Kennedy. Sir Christopher Rose, a retired court of appeal judge noted for his fierce independence, will head the inquiry which was set up by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC. Rose has been in charge of scrutinising the surveillance activities of the police and other official bodies for the past five years. He will examine allegations that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the agency headed by Starmer, misled the courts when it decided to abandon the prosecution of six activists accused of conspiring to invade one of Britain’s biggest power stations. The CPS told a court in January that it was dropping the prosecution because “previously unavailable information” which undermined their case had come to light. However, documents obtained by the Guardian indicated the information that was supposed to be new – the tapes recorded by Kennedy – had been in the hands of the CPS for more than a year. Starmer announced on Wednesday the remit of the inquiry and the appointment of Rose, who was the vice-president of the criminal division of the court of appeal until April 2006. Starmer said “in light of growing concerns about the non-disclosure of material relating to the activities” of Kennedy the inquiry would not only delve into the issue of the suppressed evidence but also investigate why only 26 of the 114 activists who were initially arrested over the alleged plot to break into the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire were charged. The others were released, raising suspicions that those who were charged were picked out unfairly or for political reasons. The expansion of the inquiry comes after Kennedy hinted in a radio interview that he could have potentially explosive information about the decision to charge some activists and not others. Starmer said the independent inquiry would examine: • “Whether the CPS approach to charging in this case was right, bearing in mind the known existence of an undercover police officer in the operation; • “Whether the CPS and prosecution counsel complied with their disclosure duties properly in relation to the known existence of an undercover police officer in this case; • “Whether the CPS arrangements in place for handling the known existence of an undercover police officer, including arrangements between the police and the CPS, the CPS and counsel and the local prosecuting team and the national co-ordinator, were adequate and properly followed in this case; • “Whether the CPS followed all relevant guidance and policy in relation to the known existence of an undercover police officer in this case.” Starmer said : “Sir Christopher will have full access to all the available evidence and will examine the issues with the utmost thoroughness. Inevitably this will take time but will be completed as soon as is practicable.” Starmer said he intended to publish the findings and recommendations made by Rose. Mark Kennedy Activism Protest UK criminal justice Rob Evans Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk
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enlarge Credit: CBPP Among the truisms of American politics is this: the side decrying “class war” is the one winning it . So it is with the ongoing Republican hostage-taking drama over the debt ceiling and upper-income tax increases. Facing overwhelming pressure from his own party, Speaker John Boehner retreated from the ” grand bargain ” on deficit reduction he supported rather than raise a dime in new tax revenue. And at a time when the federal tax burden is at its lowest in 60 years, income inequality at its highest level in 80 years and after a decade of plummeting rates on America’s wealthiest taxpayers, Republicans would sooner torpedo the American economy than ask what the ” yachting class ” can do for their country. That was the immediate reaction from Republicans in both houses of Congress to a $4 trillion debt reduction package featuring $1 trillion in new revenue over the next decade. Senators Dan Coats (R-IN) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) quickly called it “class warfare.” Utah’s Orrin Hatch wasn’t content to lament “the usual class warfare the Democrats always wage.” The poor, Hatch insisted, “need to share some of the responsibility.” As for a Senate resolution asking the same of millionaires, Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions said that was “rather pathetic.” Of course, what is really pathetic is the declining tax burden on the small slice of Americans now taking an ever-larger piece of the economic pie. Back in May, John Boehner explained to CBS News who Republicans would be trying to protect during the debt ceiling negotiations with President Obama: “The top one percent of wage earners in the United States…pay forty percent of the income taxes…The people he’s talking about taxing are the very people that we expect to reinvest in our economy.” If so, those expectations were sadly unmet after the tax cuts of George W. Bush. After all, the last time the top tax rate was 39.6% during the Clinton administration , the United States enjoyed rising incomes, 23 million new jobs and budget surpluses. Under Bush? Not so much. But while Boehner’s job creators didn’t create any jobs after the top rate was trimmed to 35% and capital gains and dividends taxes were slashed, they did enjoy an unprecedented windfall courtesy of the United States Treasury. For Republicans, this predictable result of the Bush tax cuts was a feature, not a bug. enlarge Credit: CBPP As the Center for American Progress noted in 2004, “for the majority of Americans, the tax cuts meant very little,” adding, “By next year, for instance, 88% of all Americans will receive $100 or less from the Administration’s latest tax cuts.” But that’s just the beginning of the story. As the CAP also reported, the Bush tax cuts delivered a third of their total benefits to the wealthiest 1% of Americans . And to be sure, their payday was staggering. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that millionaires on average pocketed almost $129,000 from the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. As a result, millionaires saw their after-tax incomes rise by 6.2%, while the gain for those earning between $40,000 and $50,000 was paltry 2.2%. And as the New York Times uncovered in 2006, the 2003 Bush dividend and capital gains tax cuts offered almost nothing to taxpayers earning below $100,000 a year. Instead, those windfalls reduced taxes “on incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000.” As the Times explained in a shocking chart: “The top 2 percent of taxpayers, those making more than $200,000, received more than 70% of the increased tax savings from those cuts in investment income.” It’s no wonder that between 2001 and 2007- a period during which poverty was rising and average household income had fallen – the 400 richest taxpayers saw their incomes double to an average of $345 million even as their effective tax rate was virtually halved. As ThinkProgress demonstrated, historically lower tax rates for the richest Americans did not produce either more job creation or faster economic growth . (In fact, the Bush years produced what David Leonhardt of the New York Times rightly labeled as “The decade with the slowest average annual growth since World War II.”) But what the conservative cornucopia for the gilded-class does reliably produce is unprecedented income inequality : A report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities ( CBPP ) found a financial Grand Canyon separating the very rich from everyone else. Over the three decades ending in 2007, the top 1 percent’s share of the nation’s total after-tax household income more than doubled, from 7.5 percent to 17.1 percent. During that time, the share of the middle 60% of Americans dropped from 51.1 percent to 43.5 percent; the bottom four-fifths declined from 58 percent to 48 percent. As for the poor, they fell further and further behind, with the lowest quintile’s income share sliding to just 4.9%. Expressed in dollar terms, the income gap is staggering: Between 1979 and 2007, average after-tax incomes for the top 1 percent rose by 281 percent after adjusting for inflation — an increase in income of $973,100 per household — compared to increases of 25 percent ($11,200 per household) for the middle fifth of households and 16 percent ($2,400 per household) for the bottom fifth. As the New York Times revealed in August 2009, by 2007 the top 1% – the 1.5 million families earning more than $400,000 – reaped 24% of the nation’s income. The bottom 90% – the 136 million families below $110,000 – accounted for just 50%. If you had any lingering doubts about Warren Buffett’s admission that “it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning,” this pair of charts from the New York Times should put them to rest. As the upper-income tax burden fell, income inequality in the U.S. exploded. enlarge Credit: New York Times The pathetic irony is that 98% of Republicans in Congress voted for the Ryan budget proposal which would make both income inequality and the national debt much worse. Analyses by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that the Bush tax cuts accounted for half of the deficits during his tenure, and if made permanent , over the next decade would cost the U.S. Treasury more than Iraq, Afghanistan, the recession, TARP and the stimulus – combined . The Ryan budget adds $6 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years (necessitating, of course, that Republicans raise the debt ceiling repeatedly), $4 trillion of which is dedicated to new tax cuts. And as Matthew Yglesias explained, earlier analyses of similar proposals in Ryan’s Roadmap reveal that working Americans would have to pick up the tab left unpaid by upper-income households as the top rate is dropped from 35% to 25%: This is an important element of Ryan’s original “roadmap” plan that’s never gotten the attention it deserves. But according to a Center for Tax Justice analysis (PDF), even though Ryan features large aggregate tax cuts, ninety percent of Americans would actually pay higher taxes under his plan. In other words, it wasn’t just cuts in middle class benefits in order to cut taxes on the rich. It was cuts in middle class benefits and middle class tax hikes in order to cut taxes on the rich. It’ll be interesting to see if the House Republicans formally introduce such a plan and if so how many people will vote for it. We now know the answer: 235 House Republicans and 40 GOP Senators. On tax day in 2009, former Bush press flunky Ari Fleischer fretted about proposals to raise upper-income tax rates. (The top 10% of taxpayers, Fleischer argued, are “supporting virtually everyone and everything” and “their burden keeps getting heavier.” As he also put it, “It’s also what’s called redistribution of income, and it is getting out of hand.”) But it was Michele Bachmann who in February 2009 coined the slogan for the Republican class warriors: “We’re running out of rich people in this country.” She need not have worried. As the Los Angeles Times explained in ” Millionaires Make a Comeback “, by 2010 the wealthy had more than made up their losses from the Bush Recession. (The middle class has not been so lucky.) Executive pay rose by 23% last year. Since 2009, corporate profits “captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of the growth in real national income.” By last summer, the Wall Street Journal proudly proclaimed , “U.S. Economy Is Increasingly Tied to the Rich.” As a recent Deloitte presentation for wealth managers forecast: Our analysis indicates that aggregate wealth of millionaire households in the U.S. in 2020 will likely reach $87 trillion, from $39 trillion in 2011. For their part, Democrats including Kent Conrad, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Bernie Sanders and Al Franken have offered proposals for reducing the U.S. debt in part by raising future taxes on millionaires and billionaires. Of course, if Republicans continue to have their way, that will never come to pass. Their class war is over. And if you have to ask who won it, the answer is simple. Not you . (This piece also appears at Perrspectives .)
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Jodie Nieman, 20, was in a nightclub in the Playa d’en Bossa resort when she fell ill A 20-year-old British woman has died while on holiday in Ibiza. Local police could not confirm reports that Jodie Nieman had taken ecstasy as they were waiting for the results of her post-mortem examination. Ms Nieman had been clubbing at the Space nightclub in the Playa d’en Bossa resort on the island’s south-east coast when she fell ill. An ambulance was called at 4.30am on Wednesday and she was taken to the Can Misses hospital, suffering a heart attack, a hospital spokesman said. “Ambulance staff tried to resuscitate her, and when she arrived at hospital medics continued to try to save her but it was not possible and she died at 5am,” he said. The young woman had been staying in an apartment in the resort and was out at the club with a group of female friends, who accompanied her to the hospital by car. The friends had taken ecstasy, the hospital spokesman said, but he could not confirm whether Ms Nieman had taken the drug as well. A spokeswoman for the Civil Guard in Mallorca said: “Police are investigating the death of a British woman from Croydon (south London). At the moment we cannot confirm the cause of death.” A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We are aware of the death of a British national in Ibiza in the early hours of this morning and are providing consular assistance to the family.” If Ms Nieman’s death was drug-related, it would be the first drug death of the year in Ibiza, the hospital spokesman said. During the summer season, the hospital treats between three and five patients every day who have taken drugs, he said. These people form up to 3% of the hospital’s emergency cases in July. Spain guardian.co.uk
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EU fisheries chief hopes phasing out ‘discarding’ and agreeing plans with member states will preserve Europe’s fish stocks The biggest shake-up of European fisheries regulation in four decades was unveiled on Wednesday in Brussels, intended to preserve dwindling fish stocks. Maria Damanaki, the EU fisheries chief, told policymakers in Brussels that strong and urgent action was needed if stocks were not to face collapse. She said: “Action is needed now to get all our fish stocks back into a healthy state to preserve them for present and future generations. Only under this precondition can fishermen continue to fish and earn a decent living out of their activities.” The central plank of her radical proposals is an attempt to ensure all European fish stocks are “at sustainable levels” by 2015 – a difficult task, as most stocks in the region are already overfished. She aims to achieve this by phasing out the wasteful practice of discarding healthy fish at sea – a perverse consequence of the current fishing quota systems – and agreeing with member states’ long-term management plans for their stocks, but giving the states the freedom to decide how to implement those policies. She is also likely to face opposition, as the reforms to the common fisheries policy – the roots of which date back to the Treaty of Rome of 1957 at the founding of the European Union – will mean short-term pain for fishermen, even as they should preserve the long-term future of some. Fishing groups have attacked her proposals in their draft form, arguing that their fleets will be unfairly penalised and that not enough attention has been given to possible solutions such as adjusting fishing gear. But Damanaki has made it clear she will stick to her proposals. She said: “We have to manage each stock wisely, harvesting what we can but keeping the stock healthy and productive for the future. This will bring us higher catches, a sound environment and a secure seafood supply. If we get this reform right, fishermen and coastal communities will be better off in the long run. And all Europeans will have a wider choice of fresh fish, both wild and farm produced.” The proposals also include targets and time frames to stop overfishing; ways to allow fishermen to trade their quotas with one another, which will help some fishermen to leave the industry; support measures for small-scale fisheries; better collection of data; and new rules for fish farms. Damanaki’s proposals will also replace the current annual shouting match among countries over the size of the quota they should get. At present, ministers vie for the biggest quota with a decision taken each December. But under the new plans, these annual contests would be replaced with long-term management plans, giving greater certainty for the future and less of the wrangling that can result in fisheries losing out. Day-to-day decision making would also be devolved from Brussels to the regions. Europe’s fishing fleet is too large and too efficient, according to the European Commission. This has led to drastic overfishing. Chris Davies, the UK Liberal Democrat MEP, pointed to recent academic studies suggesting Europe’s fish stocks were less than 10% of their post-war levels. Damanaki has made clear in the past few months her intention to phase out the wasteful practice of discarding healthy fish , which fishermen are forced to do under the current rules, for instance if they exceed their quota or because they catch fish for which they do not hold a quota. But she has come under pressure from fishing groups and some member states who are concerned that ending discards and forcing fishermen to land all they catch could result in lower profits for fishing crews. They could end up having to sell lower value fish or species for which there is less demand, meaning their catches may be worth less than if they could discard at will. Damanaki has acknowledged the problem, telling a meeting of the European parliament’s cross-party Fish for the Future group that some reduction in employment in fisheries was inevitable, but that without change to protect fish stocks the loss of jobs would be even greater, because Europe’s seas are so depleted. She would like help from member states to compensate fishermen for some of their lost income, and has supported pilot schemes in which fishermen would turn their boats to other uses, such as tourism or collecting plastic litter for recycling . Member states would also be encouraged to let the owners of large vessels exchange fishing rights, because there are too many boats hunting too few fish. Damanaki also wants to reform the fishing agreements that some member states have with developing countries, allowing EU vessels to fish there. These agreements have attracted controversy because, in extreme cases, they can stifle the growth of indigenous fisheries in poorer countries. Davies said: “Commissioner Damanaki might have been expected to back down in the face of opposition from those who resist change, but she seems fearless and determined to push ahead with reforms that may be the saving of our seas, of the fishing industry, and of coastal communities. “Our waters are capable of supporting many times more fish than now exist. It is not too late for the situation to be reversed, but we have now reached a crisis point. Overfishing must cease or there will be no more fish on the plate.” Fishing Food Wildlife Conservation Animals Marine life European Union Europe Fish Fiona Harvey guardian.co.uk
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