The community must get the fish back!
Norwegian fisheries policy is at a crossroads. At a time when more and more of the community’s fishing resources have been concentrated on fewer hands, do we dare to ask the big questions: Are we able to enforce Norwegian law? Who should own the sea? And who should reap the values of that?
As a parliamentary representative for the Center Party, I believe that we must be clearer that the fishing resources belong to the Norwegian people jointly. This is a basic principle we should never give up. Therefore, the quota report that was dealt with in the Storting last year was also a very important issue. Politics is a separate art, and I respect that compromises are needed to establish a majority. However, the outcome was not the way I wanted. A reminder of how the fishing development in Norway has been, and what consequences it has had is therefore intrusive.
In Finnmark we are extremely hard by this development, and we are completely dependent on a new course! We need to fish and refine the fantastic fishing resources we have along our entire coast. It will be fair and good district policy. It is also important for all of Norway, partly because settlement throughout the country is important preparedness in a troubled world.
When it comes to the structural quotas, some of the quotas will go back to the vessel groups they were taken from. I think it should have been so for all the structural quotas. This should have been a point we took a clearer settlement in the quota report.
The Center Party has this case in the spinal cord. We are shuttered for it. There is more than enough will, ideology and principles in the Center Party to take a collection in the ground, and demand even more fair fisheries policy in a possible new government platform. That is precisely why I, as a representative of the Center Party, will fight with beak and itch to get a policy that really benefits the coastal communities.
This is not just business policy. It is about preserving a life form, a culture and a basic principle: that the community’s resources should benefit the community.
Geir Adelsten Iversen
Parliamentary representative
For Finnmark (SP)
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