7. The Conference was divided in four plenary sessions led by invited keynote speakers and six themes divided into 15 sessions.
8. The first plenary session, entitled “WTO negotiations with specific reference to market access and fishery subsidy issues”, was introduced by the keynote speaker Ms Christina Schröder of the WTO. The session was chaired by Dr Audun Lem of FAO. Ms Schröder provided the historical background of the WTO, its purpose, membership and structure, and followed with a review of the procedures used for trade disputes settlements, the Doha Development Round, current market access negotiations, and tariffs on fish and fish products. She detailed the current status of the fishery subsidy negotiations within the WTO and concluded by informing the participants of the various proposals for dealing with fisheries subsidies that are on the table for negotiation.
9. The second plenary session started with a keynote speech of Mr George MacRae of the Scottish White Fish Producers Association. The session was chaired by Dr Ola Flaaten of the Norwegian College of Fishery Science. The speech of Mr MacRae was titled: “The equation: matching economic fishing effort with regenerated fish stocks” and preceded the second session which was titled “Ecological and environmental interactions with the economics of fisheries”. He started his speech stressing that matching economic fishing efforts with sensible conservation/stock regeneration is extremely important for the future of fisheries in Europe. He then discussed various fisheries and their trends in the last decades, such as the North Sea cod, whiting and haddock fisheries, and the relationships between sea mammals, seabirds and industrial fisheries. The Regional Advisory Councils, set up by the European Union (EU), and the way they function was touched upon as well. At the end of his speech he emphasized the important role economists have to play in the current and future fisheries industry in Europe; a role from which they should not walk away.
10. Professor Bill Schrank of Memorial University, St John's, Newfoundland, Canada, opened the third plenary session with a Keynote speech titled: “Government policy, fisheries management and the Newfoundland Economy: 1991 and 2002”. This session was chaired by Mr Anthony Cox of the OECD. Professor Schrank initiated his talk by stressing that excessive overfishing combined with negative environmental conditions led to the decimation of the northern cod stock and, despite its 12-year closure to commercial fishing from 1992, a failure to restore the stock. He continued by detailing the current state of the Newfoundland economy and the Newfoundland fishery and asked whether the lessons of the earlier day have been learned. The answer appeared to be no as, although the decimated groundfish have been replaced by shellfish, the nominal value of landings having doubled since 1992, the fishery still has excess capacity, fishers and fish plant workers generally earn low incomes, and the fishery remains heavily subsidized.
11. The fourth plenary session of the Conference was a well appreciated annual update of the EU Framework Programmes (FP). This session was chaired by Dr Premachandra Wattage of the Centre for the Economics and Management of Aquatic Resources (CEMARE), and Mr Sigurdur Bogason of the Directorate General (DG) Fish presented the EU Framework Programmes (FP) in fisheries in his speech, “Fishery economics research & data analysis”. Mr Bogason covered issues such as: Specific support to policy (SSP) in the sixth FP, Fishery Economics Research under the fifth FP, the demand for socio-economic research in fisheries, thematic priorities of the DG Fish and funding possibilities under the sixth FP and the seventh FP. He terminated his speech with providing the websites where more information on FPs, DG Fish and DG Research could be found at www.cordis.lu/sme; http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/index_en.html; http://europa.eu.int/comm/fisheries/.
12. The plenary sessions were followed by parallel sessions in which the participating scientists presented their research findings in six theme areas: 1) WTO negotiations with specific reference to market access and fishery subsidies issues; 2) Ecological and environmental interactions with the economics of fisheries; 3) Impact of fisheries management decisions on fisheries; 4) European research issues; 5) Fisheries development and employment; and 6) Industry issues. Appendix D provides a list of all papers presented at the Conference.
13. Unedited, completed papers of the presentations can be found on the CD-Rom attached to this report.
