Polish fishermen have expressed outrage over a documentary made for the Swedish Baltic Sea 2020 Foundation and shown in the European Parliament, to the dismay of Polish MEPs, which, they claim portrays them as primitive poachers in contrast to Swedish fishermen, who are shown freeing their catch.
Danuta Isler reports
The documentary called "For Cod's Sake" was made by a Swedish journalist Folke Ryden and produced by Baltic Sea 2020 - a Stockholm-based foundation aimed at stimulating measures which improve the environmental quality of the Baltic Sea. Shot for a year and a half at the Polish Baltic Sea coast, the final product was presented in Brussels this week.
The intial reaction of the Polish side present at the screening was clear - this country's cod fishermen are portrayed as primitives stealing bounty from the Baltic. According to Grzegorz Hałubek, the chairman of the Association of Polish Fishermen, the documentary contains lies and is manipulation. It also attempts to divert attention from the issue of the size of the Swedish fishermen's catch. Several Polish MEPs who participated in the screening were equally disturbed.
The screening of the documentary in the EP was organized by Swedish MEP Isabella Loevin from the Greens group and member of the fisheries commission. She had previously staged the screenings of, for example, 'The End of the Line" by Rupert Murray which chronicles how the demand for cod off the coast of Newfoundland in the early 1990s led to the decimation of the most abundant cod population in the world. She disagrees with the criticism saying the aim of the screening was to protest against the EU's common fisheries policy and it was not directed against Polish fishermen.