EU governments may soon be able to hand out much larger amounts of cash aid to their fishermen to help them through crises without breaking strict laws on state aid, the European Commission said on Thursday. Fisherman in any EU member state may receive up to 30,000 euros (US$38,000) each over three years without the national government having to notify Brussels, it said. At the moment, the limit is just 3,000 euros -- widely seen as far too low.

The aid, subject to an overall three-year ceiling of 2.5 percent of a countrys fisheries output, could not be used to buy or build new vessels, the Commission said in a statement. This is in line with existing EU policy to curb overfishing and quota-busting by national fleets scouring the seas for species like cod and hake, whose stocks are severely depleted. The Commission plan has to be approved by a committee of national EU experts before it can take effect.

The EU has strict and complex rules relating to state aid, designed to ensure that no government can use aid to give one sector an unfair advantage. The EU fisheries industry has long demanded a higher threshold for handing out subsidies without prior approval from Brussels, especially to alleviate the impact of surging fuel prices, and suggested a three-year ceiling of 100,000 euros. If the EUs 25 governments made full use of the new rules, the total amount of "de minimis" aid -- support exempted from state aid rules -- would be some 800 million euros over the three-year period, Commission officials said.
(Planet Ark, 23/06/2006)