THE REFORM OF THE COMMON FISHERIES POLICY REGIME OF CONTROL Manuel Pacheco Coelho
SOCIUS/ ISEG - Portugal
Rua do Quelhas, 6, 1200-781
LISBOA, Portugal
Phone: +(351) 213925800.
Fax: +(351)  213922808.
Email: coelho@iseg.utl.pt
José António B. Filipe
UNIDE/ISCTE - Portugal
Edifício ISCTE
Av. das Forças Armadas, 1649-026
LISBOA, Portugal
Phone: +(351) 966058963, +(351) 217903401.
Fax: +(351)  217903941.
Email: jose.filipe@iscte.pt
Manuel Alberto Ferreira
UNIDE/ISCTE - Portugal
Edifício ISCTE
Av. das Forças Armadas, 1649-026
LISBOA, Portugal
Phone: +(351) 914970560, +(351) 217903240.
Fax: +(351)  217903941.
Email: manuel.ferreira@iscte.pt
ABSTACT
Public enforcement of law, that is, the use of public agents to detect and sanction violators of legal rules is an obvious important subject. In the context of Fisheries Economics, the problem can be seen as an externality arising when exclusive property rights are absent. And that absence depends on, among other things, the costs of defining and enforcing exclusivity.
Most of the literature on fisheries management and regulation implicitly assumes law can be perfectly and costless enforced. Where such costs and imperfections are recognised they are not systematically incorporated in the analysis to show how management and regulatory policies are affected by their presence.
This paper explores this issue with a formal model of fisheries law enforcement to show how fishing firms behave and fisheries policies are affected by costly, imperfect enforcement of fisheries law. This type of models combines standard Gordon /Schaefer Fisheries Model with the Theory of Crime and Punishment of Becker.
The conclusions of the model are used to discuss the reform of the Control and Monitoring Regime of the Common Fisheries Policy.
Implementing Community policies in Member States is never easy, especially when myopic individual interests do not match long run collective interests. In the case of fisheries, the analysis of the Commission proposals seems to give a special attention to the increase of the probability of detection as a means to deter criminal behaviour and increase compliance with regulation. Introduction of severe penalties is not in the first line of measures to control illegal fishing.
The Commission believes that the financial support will guarantee the indispensable means of surveillance and control to the Member States. This will increase the deterrence capacity of control, in uniform manner, and increase transparency and trust between partners. But, the Commission also knows that legal administration in the Member States have significant differences and that the capacity and efficiency of Member States’ justice is not only a question of financial means devoted to this mission. It has also cultural and historical roots and it’s virtually impossible to put all the Member States in uniform position in terms of severity and speed of penalties application.
Key Words: Fisheries, Enforcement, Common Fisheries Policy
JEL Classification: K42, Q22.