Sesimbra, Portugal, Jan. 8, 2025 (Lusa) - Portugal's minister of agriculture and fisheries declared on Wednesday that he will meet the target of modernising 70 fishing vessels across the country, under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) allocated to the sector.
"We will meet the target if we achieve the execution of seventy projects [for modernising fishing vessels] by December 2025," said the minister, José Manuel Fernandes, at a public session on the European Union post-pandemic funding allocated to the fisheries sector, an event that took place at Docapesca's Lota do Cerco in Sesimbra, in the district of Setúbal.
"I believe that we will meet the target and that by 31 December 2025 we will reach the target of seventy vessels that will be reformulated, that will be intervened on, digitally, decarbonised, modernised," he said. "That target will be met."
He emphasised that the overall investment is €42 million, half of which is to come from the the RRP.
For Fernandes, who was accompanied by the secretary of state for fisheries, Cláudia Monteiro de Aguiar, on his visit to Sesimbra, the renewal of the fishing fleet that is currently underway will increase the competitiveness and sustainability of the vessels and improve safety conditions for fishermen.
"We're going to have a fleet that is more modern, more competitive and also more sustainable, more environmentally friendly," he said. "And a fleet that will also provide better safety conditions for fishermen.
"And modernity also means better working conditions. So this is a project where the various aspects and objectives of the PRR are met: it improves competitiveness, it improves cohesion, it improves sustainability, it improves our industry," he said.
"And it challenges, it forces, for example, the lack of skilled labour to be an opportunity that universities can take advantage of," he went on. "Therefore, professional training is necessary. And then, as has been said here, there are even other European countries that are apparently much stronger, but which are already taking advantage of and challenging our industry to build these vessels too."
At the public session, the minister pointed out that the third call for applications for funds from this source closes on 15 January.
According to data from the Institute for Financing Agriculture and Fisheries (IFAP), which manages the applications, the withdrawal of some projects from the first two calls allowed this third call to be opened with an allocation of €1 million.
According to IFAP, four applications have already been submitted under this latest notice and 25 more are in the pipeline. The applications submitted, which correspond to an investment of €937,000, benefit from 50% or 60% support, worth around €500,000, from the RRP.
In the first two calls for applications for financial support from the RRP for the fishing sector, with a financial allocation of €23.6 million, 80 projects were contracted, but only 65 (of which 28 are from the first call and 37 from the second) are in the implementation phase.
During his visit to Sesimbra, the minister also announced that on 22 January the government will present a request to parliament for legislative authorisation to legislate to reduce the minimum number of Portuguese fishermen on fishing vessels.
"It's public knowledge that several vessels have been fined because they don't respect the [minimum of] forty per cent of [Portuguese] nationals that are required," he said. "And so this limit will have to be revised. And in this sense, what we're doing is not only reviewing this limit so that we can have more non-nationals, but also so that we don't jeopardise the fishing sector, which would be unable to see its boats go to sea.
"At the same time, there is another point, which is training," he added. "We have a programme in fisheries called FOR-MAR. Through FOR-MAR, we're going to provide specific training, not just in terms of the language itself, for integration and inclusion. Another point is that we want to attract our young people to fishing, as well as to agriculture."
GR/ARO // ARO.
Lusa
