Commission Decision of 6 November 2008 adopting a multiannual Community programme pursuant to Council Regulation (EC) No 199/2008 establishing a Community framework for the collection, management and use of data in the fisheries sector and support for scientific advice regarding the common fisheries policy (2008/949/EC) (repealed)

A. Collection of economic variables

1. Variables

1. Variables to be collected are listed in Appendix VI. All economic variables are to be collected on an annual basis with the exception of those identified as transversal variables as defined in Appendix VIII and those identified in order to measure the effects of the fishery on the marine ecosystem as defined in Appendix XIII which are to be collected at more disaggregated levels The population is all vessels in the Community Fishing Fleet Register on 1 January. All economic variables have to be collected for active vessels. For each vessel for which economic variables defined in Appendix VI are collected, the corresponding transversal variables defined in Appendix VIII have also to be collected.

2. For inactive vessels only capital value (Appendix VI), fleet (Appendix VI) and capacity (Appendix VIII) shall be collected.

3. National currencies shall be transformed into euros using the average annual exchange rates available from the European Central Bank (ECB).

2. Disaggregation levels

1. Economic variables shall be reported for each fleet segment (Appendix III) and supra region (Appendix II). Six length classes (using the overall length measurement (LOA)) are defined. However Member States are free to further disaggregate length classes if appropriate.

2. The dominance criteria shall be used to allocate each vessel to a segment based on the number of fishing days used with each gear. If a fishing gear is used by more than the sum of all the others (i.e. a vessel spends more than 50 % of its fishing time using that gear), the vessel shall be allocated to that segment. If not, the vessel shall be allocated to the following fleet segment:

(a)

‘vessels using Polyvalent active gears’ if it only uses active gears;

(b)

‘vessels using Polyvalent passive gears’ if it only uses passive gears;

(c)

‘vessels using active and passive gears’.

3. In cases where a vessel operates in more than one supra region as defined in Appendix II, Member States shall explain in their national programme to which supra region the vessel is allocated.

4. In cases where a fleet segment has less than 10 vessels:

(a)

Clustering may be necessary in order to design the sampling plan and to report economic variables;

(b)

Member States shall report which fleet segments have been grouped at the national level and shall justify the clustering on the basis of statistical analysis;

(c)

In their annual report, Member States shall report the number of sampled vessels for each fleet segment regardless of any clustering made to collect or provide the data;

(d)

Regional coordination meetings shall define homogeneous clustering methodology at the level of supra regions so that economic variables are comparable.

3. Sampling strategy

1. Member States shall describe their methodologies used for estimating each economic variable, including quality aspects, in their national programmes.

2. Member States shall ensure consistency and comparability of all economic variables when derived from different sources (e.g. surveys, fleet register, logbooks, sales notes).

4. Precision levels

1. Member States shall include in their annual report information on the quality (accuracy and precision) of estimates.