The fat people are wronged. Faced with rising fuel prices for several months, fishermen can claim substantial aid from the French state. Supposed to end in the fall, this aid was finally extended as Hervé Berville had promised. After announcing the end of this fuel aid, the Secretary of State for the Sea had done a nice backpedal in the face of the discontent of the profession. But in the ports, anger is still very present among some fishermen. Finally, especially among the owners of the largest shipping companies, who have already reached the ceiling set by the European Commission and can no longer receive this aid. “They want to let us die quietly! », denounce these bosses, who employ some 800 fishermen in Brittany.
To raise awareness of their situation, the eight largest Breton shipping companies, with around sixty trawlers and 800 sailors, are meeting Monday afternoon in Lorient (Morbihan), on the eve of Emmanuel Macron’s arrival at the Assizes of the Sea in Nantes.
Uno aid of 20 cents per liter of fuel
The Porcher armament is part of the so-called “structured” armaments, that is to say that it has several boats. Every week, he spends “220,000 euros on diesel” and quickly exploded his aid quota. Implemented in March 2022, after the surge in energy prices caused by the war in Ukraine, this system allows fishermen to receive aid of 20 cents per liter of fuel. A system which is however limited to 300,000 euros per company, regardless of the number of boats. “We reached the ceiling in August 2022. We used up the aid in around four months,” says Christophe Collin, director of the Bigouden shipping line in Guilvinec (Finistère), which has nine deep-sea trawlers.
Sailors also suffer from these increases, they who are paid by the share, according to the selling price of fish, once charges have been deducted. “Roughly speaking, they lose 400 to 500 euros over a 14-day trip,” estimates Ludovic Le Lay, who points to a “profoundly unfair distortion of competition” with artisanal trawlers who have not yet exceeded the ceiling.
The successive increases in the ceiling (it will be raised again to 335,000 euros on January 1) were a short-lived relief for these big arms. “Diesel can represent up to 40% of our turnover,” says Ludovic Le Lay, director of the Hent ar Bugale shipping company in Loctudy (Finistère). “There are still ways to get out of this,” he concedes, “if the prices are in our favor (during open outcry auctions). But above all we lose a lot of money.” On Wednesday, the Via Océan (formerly Saupiquet) shipping company, based in Concarneau (Finistère) and whose three boats fish for tropical tuna in the Atlantic, announced a plan to “permanently cease its activities” due in particular to the “very sharp increase in its costs”.