'A fleet, they highlighted, that does not have among its priorities the sustainability of the seas, nor the rights of workers'

They denounce that European limitations encourage the Chinese fleet to invade the seas

Shipowners, MEPs and unions agree that European regulations are encouraging the Chinese fleet to invade the seas

• The sector denounces that Brussels systematically leaves the long-distance fleet out of European subsidies, slowing down its modernization and condemning it to scrapping.
• The limits imposed by the community regulation on Galician boats are giving wings to the Chinese, for whom sustainability or workers' rights are not a priority.
• Shipowners, unions, representatives of the Fisheries Secretariat and the Department of the Sea and MEPs agreed to demand changes in the regulations "so as not to continue fishing in the 21st century with 20th century boats".

A Guarda - "The long-distance fleet, including the Orpagu fleet, may have its days numbered if there is not a change in community regulations that allows us to receive subsidies to modernize our vessels and make them more sustainable, efficient and attractive for young people", said this morning from Orpagu both its president, Joaquín Cadilla, and the managing director, Juana Parada, at the opening and closing of the International Fishing Days that the A Guarda Longliners Organization has organized every year for nine years .

Orpagu president, Joaquín Cadilla with the managing director, Juana Parada

In this sense, they regretted that Brussels' limitations on the fleet are causing Chinese ships to take over all the seas.

A fleet, they highlighted, "that does not have among its priorities the sustainability of the seas, nor the rights of workers." These demands of the surface longline sector were supported by the representatives of the administrations -Francisco de Borja Carmona of the Secretariat of Fisheries and Antonio Basanta, General Director of Fisheries of the Consellería do Mar-, MEPs Nicolás González Casares (PSOE) and Ana Miranda (BNG), and the regional parliamentarian Begoña Freire (PP), who denounced that the Galician sector is forced "to fish with 20th century boats in the 21st century".

Photo group speakers and authorities A Guarda

In fact, in the closing speech, Juana Parada stressed that they can receive European subsidies to "patch vessels that have an average age of 30 years" and not "to build new units not intended to fish more but to be more sustainable and efficient ”.

Parada called for a change of mentality in the European Commission because "right now there are many shipowners thinking about scrapping and that is because something is not being done well."

The increasingly real possibility of leaving European food sovereignty in the hands of the Chinese fleet was another of the issues discussed at the round tables that brought together businessmen, representatives of the Government of Spain and the Xunta de Galicia, the CCOO and CIG unions, specialists in fishing training such as Ramón Otero and Antía Guillén and representatives of innovation companies and shipyards such as Gonzalo Redondo, CEO of D3 Applied Technologies; Jorge Luis Sánchez, from Nodosa, or Javier Martín-Arroyo, from Astilleros Gondán, who highlighted that around 90% of the ships they build are for outside Spain.

Precisely these last three referred to pilot ship projects, “some of them already contracted in other countries, which allow combining efficiency, care for the environment and comfort for workers. In fact, the demand to “revise the gross tonnage capacity limit to improve living conditions on board, something that current Community legislation does not allow” was widely debated in several of the round tables organized by Orpagu.

The Renewal Plan for the long-distance fleet, so demanded by the sector and supported by all the Spanish political groups with representation in Brussels, without exception, is the pending issue for a sector that sees how every year it loses fishing opportunities, lacks crew to be able to go out to sea and receives the indiscriminate attack of pseudo environmentalists "before the inaction of Brussels".

As the Galician General Director of Fisheries pointed out at the closing of the event, "we have reinvented ourselves, we are a sector that has gone from complaining to proposing and leading and, despite this, Brussels turns its back on us".

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