It's not often that one hears a European Union official issue a mea culpa. That's why Franz Fischler's comments in London on Monday were so surprising.
"The present situation is a failure, so therefore it has to change," said Mr. Fischler, the EU's Fisheries Commissioner. He was referring to the Common Fisheries Policy, which has guided EU policy on fish harvesting since 1971. Right now the state of the continent's traditional fishing grounds is approaching a crisis so severe that the EU announced last month that it may need to cut fishing fleets by as much as 60%...
The commission proposes lowering quotas further and adjusting subsidies for things such as fleet modernization and the scrapping of older vessels. But these changes ignore alternatives that would allow regulators to harness the power of the marketplace to protect fish stocks while simultaneously giving fishermen a stake in protecting their fishing grounds. One such option is an individually transferable quota (ITQ).
