4.1 



OVERVIEW 



The three major fishing countries in Eastern Europe, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, were 

 associated with the former Soviet Union in the so-called 5-partite agreement (the former East 

 Germany was the fifth member) to assist each other in developing high-seas fisheries. Although 

 the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, now the Russian Federation, was the leading 

 force behind the expansion into the world's oceans, all three East European countries rapidly 

 developed their own fishing fleets. Poland also organized an important and productive network 

 of fishery shipyards which built hundreds of vessels over the past four decades. 



Romania and Bulgaria are both adjacent to the Black Sea and their fisheries have been 

 traditionally based on that body of water. In the 1960s, however, they began to buy high-seas 

 fishing and fishery support vessels from the Soviet Union, Poland, and Germany and to build 

 an infrastructure for the processing of landed fish. Along with the increase in fishery-vessel 

 tonnage, their marine catch grew rapidly until the late 1970s when coastal countries began to 

 extend fishery jurisdictions to 200 nautical miles. Romanian and Bulgarian fishery administrators 

 were unable to adapt themselves to the new conditions. As a result, their catch began to stagnate 

 and finally decreased rapidly until their aging fleets became more of a burden than an asset. 



The outlook for both industries is bleak and the lack of rapid privatization has helped to 

 perpetuate the inbred inefficiencies of large government-owned corporations. The Bulgarian 

 high-seas fishing company was forced into bankruptcy and will have to be bailed out by 

 government funds to continue operations. In Romania also, the industry is still government- 

 owned and, as in the other former communist countries, its two principal goals are: 1) to 

 maintain the full use of the fishery fleet and the concomitant employment of its fishermen, and 

 2) the export of fishery products to earn hard currencies. 



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