The recent court judgment on a foreign vessel fishing in Malta’s territorial waters would not set a precedent and only applied to the parties involved in that case, the government has said.
Confirming it had not been informed of the court sitting when the case was heard or about the judgment itself, the government said it was confident the ruling would not have any repercussions for the local fishing industry.
The Parliamentary Secretariat for Agriculture, Fisheries and Animal Rights was commenting after the Times of Malta reported that two foreign fishermen were not found guilty of illegal fishing in Maltese territorial waters. The authorities did not appeal.
The case dates to June 2008, when a French-flagged tuna fishing vessel captained by Frenchman Fontanet Silvere and owned by Moroccan Serge Antoine Jose Perez was stopped by a patrol boat in Malta’s 25-mile conservation zone.
The captain told the police the tuna had been legally caught outside Malta’s conservation zone and the vessel had unintentionally drifted into Maltese waters after the monitoring system broke down.
The fishermen were in possession of a ‘special fishing permit’ issued in France and were listed in the European Community Fleet Register.
The court ruled that the EU special fishing permit was enough for the foreign fishermen in question to fish in Maltese waters. The judgment raised concerns about the impact on the island’s 25-mile management zone but the government stressed that the doctrine of precedent did not apply within the Maltese legal order and that “judgments apply among the parties for their particular case”.
“The government remains committed to safeguarding the 25 nautical miles. In fact, since 2013, seven other vessels involved in illegal activities through fishing within Maltese waters have been prosecuted. These included five non-Malta-registered community vessels and two third-country vessels.”
The secretariat also said that appeals from such judgments required the exercise of discretion by the prosecution in asking the court to send the acts of the case to the Attorney General.
It said the special fishing permit quoted in this case referred to the allocation of a quota to the French fishing vessel to target bluefin tuna by the French authorities. The waters falling within Malta’s jurisdiction are subject to an EU fishing effort regime whereby the capacity operating within the 25-nautical mile management zone is capped under EU law.
It said the French vessel did not possess such a permit and should therefore not have been fishing in Malta’s territorial waters.
The Times of Malta last week quoted the prosecuting officer in the case as saying that a representative of the Fisheries Department had only attended the first sitting.