It is Sweden and Finland that fish most of the herring and sturgeon in the Baltic Sea, and Finland takes the most. Before this week’s fishing negotiations, Sweden’s starting point was that the EU’s proposed quotas would be reduced, while Finland considered the proposal to be good and also scientifically based, as it was based on data from the international marine research council ICES.
Sweden, on the other hand, believes that there are shortcomings with the basis and that more margin of safety is needed to protect fish stocks that have often and for a long time been threatened. Therefore, Sweden wants to have lower quotas than what the Marine Research Council proposes.
The Swedish defeat was cemented
When the negotiations ended, the Finnish negotiators had got what they wanted, the streaming quota was doubled in the central Baltic Sea and the country’s agriculture minister was “very satisfied”. While Sweden’s Rural Affairs Minister Peter Kullgren was “disappointed” that the quotas were not lower. And the Swedish defeat was cemented by a “very concerned” Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson:
– There is an obvious risk of overfishing, Kristersson told TT.
So how can this disappointment be presented as anything other than a bad negotiation? According to the Minister for Rural Affairs, the result would have been even worse if Sweden had not participated in the decision. And on that point he is supported by the Finnish side, where an official tells TV4 that the two countries had a good cooperation, although without wanting to specify on which points Finland had to compromise.
Could Sweden have done differently?
Peter Kullgren’s solution becomes the politician’s: to pick out a precise number as a measure that the defeat was also a success. According to Kullgren, the quotas would have been at least 15,000 tonnes higher if Sweden had pulled out of the negotiations.
So could Sweden have done differently? Critics from, for example, the Green Party say that Peter Kullgren should have been more active, much earlier and for a longer period. But even the most critical basically agrees with the Minister of Rural Affairs that the situation in these fisheries negotiations is difficult, because Sweden is alone in wanting to reduce the quotas and then you have no possibility of getting other countries to join you – you stand alone.
They are the losers
Researchers in Sweden believe that the strong and loud Swedish debate about fishing has caused Sweden’s governments to follow a different line than other Baltic Sea countries. And this is the reason why Sweden does not bring other countries along on a more restrictive line.
The consequences of the announcement about the new fishing quotas are that industrial fishing in the Baltic Sea can continue. The losers are fishermen, researchers and politicians who, like the prime minister, believe that this will lead to overfishing and increasingly worse consequences for the Baltic Sea. And if they are right, the big loser is the Baltic Sea.