Discussions at the April Council of Ministers meeting seemingly dealt a final blow to the Commission’s proposal for mandatory transferable fishing concessions (TFCs) to be used by Member States to allocate quotas and regulate access to fish resources. At their launch, the proposals were denounced as “a compulsory near-privatisation of marine resources” by a coalition of environmental organisations.
At the Council, only 5 of 27 Member States spoke out in support of the proposal for mandatory TFCs, and even countries which have longstanding TFC-like systems such as Denmark, Estonia and the Netherlands were against the Commission proposals. Damanaki responded to this by stressing that a focus on matching fishing opportunities to the size of the fleet must be retained so that the key issue of overfishing is resolved. To this end, both the Commissioner and the Danish Presidency agreed on the need for Member States to submit evaluations of their fleet’s capacity, in terms of engine power. Such an evaluation represents an important first step to understanding where overcapacities lie in the EU fleet.
The Commission has been unable to produce a report that includes an analysis of the EU fleet as several Member States have failed to submitted data on the engine power of their vessels. In future, Damanaki suggested that subsidy funds could we withheld from non-compliant Member States under a conditionality clause, if approved by the legal services.
Mette Gjerskov, the Danish Minister and current chair of the Council, aimed to present a compromise solution that would help to align resources and catching capacity. She argued that other mandatory measures could apply to Member States that forces them to address the issue of capacity. Plans could be submitted to the Commission for review, which outlines how after a capacity evaluation, each country aims to reduce its fleet power. A range of measures could then be implemented to reach the goal of “sustainable fisheries”.
At the Council meeting, regionalisation and the socio-economic impacts of the CFP reform were also discussed. BALTFISH was held up as an example of regionalisation in action by the Commissioner and Minsters from several Baltic Member States. There was widespread agreement that a sea-basin approach would help to avoid micro-management from Brussels and better integrate regional stakeholders.