Trawlermen face up to 10 years of cod fishing curbs

British fishermen face between five and 10 more years of painful cuts in their quotas after the European Commission announced plans for a long-term crackdown on fishing to save collapsing cod stocks.

Yesterday's proposals are the latest and most drastic effort to avert the extinction of cod and other species in the North and Irish seas off the west coast of Scotland, following years of overfishing.

Confronted by the threat of a total collapse of stocks, the Commission has been forced to propose ever more stringent curbs on fishing, even suggesting a total ban on cod fishing.

The latest rethink is designed to ensure that quotas are set in a way that allows the population of mature fish to increase to sustainable levels.

At a press conference in Brussels yesterday the EU Fisheries Commissioner, Franz Fischler, argued that, although painful, the policy would ultimately guarantee fishermen's livelihoods. "For the first time we're going to have long-term tailor-made plans for threatened species," said Mr Fischler. "We want to guarantee the future for fishermen by guaranteeing the reason for their existence.

"Given the catastrophic situation in the North Sea, we are not talking about months, but years," he added.

If approved by EU ministers later this month, the plan would combine sharp cuts in the overall cod catches assigned annually to each EU member state with separate allocations of amounts of time that vessels may spend at sea, depending on engine power.

The key to the cod "recovery programme" – which will be followed by similar rules to protect other species such as hake, sole and haddock – will be the calculation of "fishing effort", or the amount of time the fleet spends catching cod.

This will be calculated in "kilowatt-days", set by multiplying the boat's engine power by the days spent fishing. National authorities will be given a fixed amount of "kilowatt-days" to distribute among the fleet, presenting ministers with a new dilemma over how to share the reduced spoils.

Fishermen are in no doubt that the plan means more days spent in port, with lay-offs and the scrapping of vessels. That conclusion appeared to be confirmed by Mr Fischler who urged EU governments to take more from a £2.5bn fund for socio-economic measures.

The fund was introduced in 2000, before the fishing crisis became acute, and runs until 2006 but it has been little used because governments have to match EU cash with some of their own. About £150m of it is allocated for the UK fleet and only 3 per cent of the EU total has been earmarked by member states.

The chairman of the European Parliament's fisheries committee, the Conservative MEP Struan Stevenson, said: "The ball is firmly at the feet of [the Fisheries minister] Elliot Morley. If he fails to apply for emergency aid for fishermen, he will be guilty of the gross betrayal of our industry in its time of need.

"With over 250 UK whitefish vessels applying for decommissioning, I hope that our industry does not collapse, so that when cod stocks eventually recover, it is not only the Spanish fleet who will reap the benefits."