Commissioner Maria Damanaki & Spain's fisheries minister Miguel Arias Cañete. Photo: Council

Most interventions followed a similar pattern. “I support MSY as a goal,” ministers said, one after the other. Then they added a three-letter word: “But…”.

But we cannot do it by 2015. But we want to add the words ‘where possible’. But we cannot do it with stocks shared with third countries. But it is difficult in the mixed fisheries of the Mediterranean. But we have to consider the socioeconomic consequences.

Socioeconomic aspects
The last point is interesting, of course, since there is evidence that rebuilding fish stocks to MSY levels quickly would benefit the fishing industry. The results in a recent report by OECD showed considerable economic gains from rebuilding fisheries. Similar conclusions can be found in the Commission’s CFP impact assessment and a recent report by the New Economics Foundation.

Those who shout the loudest
If reaching MSY quickly leads to more profitable fisheries, why do ministers refer to socioeconomic aspects and say they do not want to reach MSY by 2015?

“They are probably thinking of those that are shouting the loudest: those who are profiting from high quotas and overfishing today, those who are the ones that benefit from lobbying that pushes for overfishing,” said Saskia Richartz, Greenpeace EU fisheries policy director, and added: “If you listen to small scale fishermen that fish sustainably you get a clear message. They want to recover fish stocks as fast as possible.”

In the end of the reform process, the Council and the European Parliament will have to agree on a compromise. The proposal by the Parliament’s rapporteur, Ulrike Rodust, is that fish stocks should be restored and maintained above MSY levels by 2015.

At today’s meeting, ministers also discussed some aspects of the new subsidies regime, the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, EMFF.

Documentation
> Watch the recorded video from the Council discussion on MSY
> Written summary of each minister’s intervention by Ronny Patz on his blog

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End overfishing – Maximum sustainable yield (MSY)
The European Commission has proposed that fish stocks should be restored above levels that can produce Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) by 2015. This is effectively a proposal to end overfishing, because it would require fishing quotas to be set in a way that allows for fish stocks to be restored.

What is MSY exactly? Learn more in our article Explaining the misunderstandings about MSY: why it’s possible tomorrow.

WWF has made a video which explains what MSY is. Recently, a report concluded that reaching MSY could support more jobs in the fishing sector.

What have member states said already? The initial comments on the Commission’s proposal that were made in the Council’s fisheries working group are summarised in the so-called ‘Bible’, a document which has been leaked and published by the Guardian. The comments on article 2 show that most member states say that they want to achieve MSY by 2015 “where possible”.

Commissioner Maria Damanaki has said that a more binding approach is needed, because “‘where possible’ may mean ‘never’”. Ulrike Rodust, the Parliament’s rapporteur, proposes that exploitation rates shall ensure MSY by 2015.

To guide the ministers’ discussion on Monday, the Danish presidency has prepared three questions on MSY.

The money – European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF)
Ministers will also discuss the proposal for the new European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF).

Subsidies are a sensitive issue. Without them, the European fishing fleet would currently be running at a 4.6% loss. But, in fact, research shows that fisheries would be more profitable if subsidies were removed.

Nevertheless, 14 member states last year signed declarations calling for maintaining generous fisheries subsidies.

Today, 12 May, Ocean 2012 released a briefing – ‘Subsidising fishing: how many times must we pay for our fish?‘ – which is intended to expose how EU taxpayers’ money is being spent fuelling EU overfishing. Said Markus Knigge, spokesperson for Ocean2012: “Public funds should be directed to restoring fisheries not to fuel overfishing.”

The Danish presidency has prepared questions about the EMFF that will be discussed by ministers.

Follow the meeting
The Council will webstream the meeting on video.consilium.europa.eu on Monday 14 May 2012, at 11:15.

More information about the meeting here: Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting, 14–15 May

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With 50 votes against 0 (and 8 abstentions), MEPs in the environment committee today approved an opinion on the main item in the CFP reform: the basic regulation. The draftsman, Chris Davies (ALDE), said after the vote that he welcomed the endorsement for policies that would ensure working towards restoring European fish stocks.

“It sends a strong signal that there is a very large body of members who say we can’t carry on as we are, we can’t carry on overfishing. If that conviction carries forward to the fisheries committee, we’re going to have a very successful outcome,” Chris Davies said.

Overturn fisheries committee
If the fisheries committee later this year would vote differently on crucial issues in the reform, such as achieving maximum sustainable yield, today’s vote means that there is opportunity for overturning the fisheries committee decision in Parliament, according to Chris Davies.

“I think within the Parliament as a whole, those people who pay any attention to the issue overwhelmingly believe that we need to put in place some really sustainable policies,” he said.

The the report was adopted by the committee with 50 votes against 0, with 8 MEPs abstaining. Originally, there were 542 amendments, but most of them had been replaced by a list of 38 consolidated amendments tabled jointly by several political groups. All of the 38 consolidated amendments were adopted.

A coalition of environmental NGOs – including Greenpeace, Ocean2012, Oceana and WWF – praised the committee for the outcome of the vote. In a press release, the group welcomed the commitment to restore fish populations above sustainable levels by 2015 and the support for preferential access to fishing for the most sustainable operations.

Aim for maximum economic yield
In short, some of the proposals adopted today:

• setting a target of achieving above maximum sustainable yield in all fisheries by 2015 (no overfishing)
• long term management plans to be agreed for all fisheries, based on best scientific evidence or the precautionary principle
• restrictions on the degree to which Fisheries Ministers can set quotas that ignore scientific evidence
• requiring all fish caught to be landed and ending discards, to promote the use of more selective fishing gear
• transferable fishing concessions to be established only on a voluntary basis by Member States
• an assessment of overcapacity in the fishing fleet (too many boats chasing too few fish), and measures to reduce it
• full transparency regarding the allocation of fishing rights
• allocation of fishing rights to benefit small-scale fishermen
• the establishment of fisheries reserves
• long-term goals to restore stocks to levels that can produce the maximum economic yield for fishermen
• support for regionalised decision-making by encouraging MS to cooperate together when they are part of the same sea-basin
• strict sanctions against Member States that fail to comply with the requirmenets of the Regulation

CMO vote
The environment committee also voted on an opinion on Struan Stevenson’s report on the Common Market Organisation (CMO) in fisheries.

Documents
The consolidated opinions on the basic regulation and CMO regulation, as voted, will soon be made available on the environment committee website.

A preliminary version of the ENVI opinion is available.

Meanwhile, download Chris Davies’ draft opinion on the basic regulation and the consolidated amendments that were adopted.

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Ulrike Rodust

A few days ago the rapporteur, Ulrike Rodust (S&D), sent her draft report to translation. CFP Reform Watch has a copy for you to download. Below is a summary of some of Rodust’s proposals (please note that the references to amendments is not exhaustive):

• Special rules shall apply to the Mediterranean Sea. Where member states do not apply fishing concessions, they shall establish a system of territorially based user rights for fishing (TURFs) to determine what vessels are allowed to fish where. (Amendments 176, 177)
• Member states shall establish fish stock recovery areas in which all fishing is prohibited. 10 percent of the territorial waters shall be protected within three years of the entry into force of the regulation. (Amendment 68)
• Council is pressured to set fishing opportunities that correspond to the MSY goals and with a long-term perspective, and a EP delegation shall be present at the Council meeting that establishes fishing opportunities. (Amendment 116)
• A discard ban should be introduced on a fishery-by-fishery base. (Amendments 8, 103–107)
• Transferability of fishing concessions should only be mandatory in case a member state fails to adjust its fishing capacity to available resources. (Amendments 13, 18, 143, 166, 167, 182)
• Member states and the EU shall provide an adequate social safety net for fishers who need to leave the sector in cases where overcapacity has to be reduced. (Amendment 17)
• It is pointed out that a healthy marine environment is a precondition for sustainable economic and social development in the fisheries sector. (Amendment 28)
• With regards to maximum sustainable yield (MSY), exploitation rates should be adjusted with the aim of achieving the biomass of Bmsy by 2015. If a fishery lacks a multiannual plan, the exploitation rates shall be set below the fishing mortality Fmsy. (Amendments 29, 118)
• Member states shall envisage giving prioritised access and other incentives for low-impact fishing practices. (Amendments 61, 64, 156)
• Member states shall conduct pilot projects aimed at improving selectivity in fisheries, by the end of 2014. (Amendment 99)
• Member states that do not comply with the rules of the CFP shall have their payments suspended or interrupted. (Amendment 214)
• At least half the seats in advisory councils (previously Regional advisory councils) shall be given to representatives from outside the fisheries sector. (Amendment 223)

What’s next?
The draft report will be presented officially at the next Fisheries Committee meeting, 21 May in Strasbourg. Before that date, the English version of the report will be translated into other languages.

Other Committee members may then draft amendments to the report. The report is scheduled to be voted in Fisheries Committee 10 or 11 July 2012.

The Fisheries Committee may take into account the opinions of the Committees for Development, Budget, Environment and Regional Development. The Environment Committee will vote on its opinion tomorrow, 8 May.

Download the document
> Rodust Draft Report on the basic regulation

Axel Naver

Fisheries items will be discussed on Friday 27 April.

Continuing their discussion of the reform of the common fisheries policy (CFP), ministers will hold a debate on the proposal for a new basic regulation, focussing on the issues of regionalisation and transferable fishing concessions. There will also be a lunch debate on socio-economic aspects.

In a preparation document (updated 20 April), the Danish Presidency outlines a set of questions that the ministers will have to answer during the debate.

In a blog post, political scientist Ronny Patz writes, “This looks like quite a set of questions and I wonder whether ministers will actually able to answer all these during the two meeting days.”

Download a Precidency non-paper on regionalisation for discussion at the meeting.

Agenda and meeting documents will be available on the Council website before the meeting.

> Danish Presidency webpage for the meeting.

> Press briefing

As EU fisheries ministers met in Council today, six member states – the UK, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany and Ireland – tabled a paper with a common approach to regionalised decision-making in the future CFP.

Each region is different
“This sets out a pragmatic method to achieve regionalisation,” Richard Benyon, the UK fisheries minister, said about the paper.

Eskil Erlandsson, Swede, Simon Coveney, Ireland and George Pullicino, Malta. Photo: The Council of the European Union

As ministers spoke during todays discussions, all of them welcomed the general idea of moving much of the decision-making in fisheries management to a more regional level. The Mediterranean is different from the Baltic Sea or the Black Sea, and ministers all agreed that detailed decisions on how to achieve the goals of sustainable fishing must be tailored to the specificities of each region.

The question is: how?

What the Treaty allows
The Treaty of the European Union does not allow for any discussions among relevant Member States to be formalised, for example through voting procedures, according to a paper written by the Danish presidency.

In other words, there are uncertainties about how it would be possible to accommodate regional cooperation between member states within the EU legal framework.

Many member states today said they would like the last word to remain at the EU level in order to ensure a level playing field.

Much of the discussion today revolved about the use of delegated acts or implementing acts – two ways of decision making that are new since the Lisbon treaty. In general, delegated acts give more power to the European Parliament, while implementing acts give more power to the Council. A more detailed explanation of the differences between the two acts can be found at EurActive.

Joint proposal by six member states
In short, the paper tabled by six member states proposes a procedure that goes like this:

Where there is unanimous agreement among a group of member states on a set of management measures, the Commission would use implementing acts to transpose these measures. If member states do not succeed in agreeing coherent measures, a further proposal on measures would be brought forward by the Commission for decision by the Council or co-decision by the Council and Parliament as appropriate.

In either case, the measures decided on by fisheries managers in any given fishery would be set out in EU legislation.

The role of advisory councils
Ministers agreed that the regional advisory councils (RACs) would need to be strengthened in a future regionalised decision-making process. Several delegations said they were in favour of making it mandatory to consult the RACs.

France said that current composition rules should be maintained, which would provide for fishermen having a majority of seats in the councils. The Portugese minister said that the scientific component in the RACs should be strengthened.

The discussions on regionalisation are not over. It will require further work to find the specific models of how to make de-centralised decision-making work, the Danish fisheries minister, Mette Gjerskov, concluded at a press conference after the meeting.

Documents & video from the Council meeting 27 April
> Danish presidency non-paper on regionalisation
> Common position presented by a group of member states (UK BE DK FR DE IE)
> Presidency questions on TFCs and regionalisation
> Council press release
> European Commission non-paper on regionalisation (presented earlier this year)

> Press conference video
> Video of the entire meeting (you can click the flags below the video to select which intervention you want to see)

Related article: Ministers criticise plan to create quota market

Axel Naver

Mette Gjerskov, Danish Fisheries Minister, Presidency. Photo: The Council of the European Union

“We could hear that the proposal from the Commission about having mandatory TFCs was questioned a lot by the member states,” the Danish fisheries minister, Mette Gjerskov, said at a press conference after a discussion among fisheries ministers in Council this morning.

Majority call for voluntary TFCs
Most member states – including large states such as Germany and France – raised objections to the European Commission’s proposal of introducing mandatory TFCs as a way of letting market forces take care of the necessary reduction of overcapacity in the EU fishing fleet.

Introducing TFCs should be voluntary, since a one-size-fits-all approach does not take into account the varying contexts in each country, and it should be up to each member state to decide how they allocate fishing opportunities, ministers said.

Several member states that already have TFCs – such as Denmark and Estonia – said they were very happy with their systems of transferable quotas, but that it should still be up to each member state to decide if they want TFCs or not.

Some member states support TFCs
Still, there was a number of member states – such as Sweden and Spain – whose ministers said they clearly support making TFCs compulsory, as long as there are safeguards that protect the coastal fleet and exclude the small scale vessels from tradable quotas. The Spanish minister said that TFCs would be especially suitable for the long distance fleet and that quotas should be tradable between member states. The Italian minister, on the contrary, said that if TFCs are introduced they should only be tradable within a specific region within a member state.

Alternatives to control overcapacity
“Overcapacity is the problem. We have to adapt capacity to the level of available fishing opportunities,” said Maria Damanaki, the Fisheries Commissioner. The member states that opposed mandatory TFCs should present other alternatives on how to reduce overcapacity, she said.

Denmark presented one such alternative, in which each member state would be obliged to report on their capacity and present measures on how to reduce overcapacity. If such a plan is not presented, the member state should be excluded from financial support from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF), according to the Danish proposal.

Videos & documents from the Council meeting 27 April 2012
> Press conference
> Video of the entire meeting (you can click the flags below the video to select which intervention you want to see)
The discussions were based on a set of questions written by the Danish presidency.

Related article: Fisheries Committee debates transferable fishing concessions

Axel Naver

The Parliament’s Fisheries Committee organised a hearing on transferable fishing concessions (TFCs) on 24 April.

Transferability deleted by the rapporteur
Ulrike Rodust (S&D, DE), who will present her report on the Basic Regulation in May, said she favoured deleting the “transferability” from the concept for now: “So TFCs are just FCs in my report”. “My proposal is that if after six years we haven’t been able to reduce the capacities, then, and only then, the fishing concessions should be made transferable. Let’s give member states time to apply alternative solutions.”

Other committee members echoed previous statements about mandatory TFCs, with Pat the Cope Gallagher (ALDE, IE) and Alain Cadec (EPP, FR) voicing their opposition to TFCs, and Carmen Fraga (EPP, ES) expressing her support for mandatory FTCs.

Should society give away a public resource?
Among the invited experts at the hearing, there was broad consensus on the concept that marine resources are and must remain a common good and that TFCs cannot confer property but only lease user rights for a certain period of time.

The possibility and risk of financial speculation with TFCs was addressed by Professor Seth Macinko, University of Rhode Island, USA. He said that experiences from other countries have proven it very difficult to control the market forces once they have been unleashed, even when there have been attempts at introducing safeguards against speculation.

Seth Macinko questioned whether it would be acceptable to give away the wealth of a public resource during times of imposed austerity measures. As an alternative, he proposed that member states could use a set of social and environmental criteria for access to the resource, giving priority access to those who fish in a more sustainable way and contribute more to the local economy.

Will Parliament and Council make TFCs voluntary?
Changing the word “shall” to “may” in a legal text means a lot, and a large number of MEPs in the Environment Committee have made amendments proposing that member states “may” establish a system of TFCs, as opposed to “shall” establish such a system.

Chris Davies, rapporteur for the Environment Committee’s opinion on the basic regulation, said at a meeting 25 April that compulsory TFCs therefore seemed unlikely to survive the Environment Committee vote 8 May.

With Fisheries Committee MEPs divided on the issue, it remains to be seen whether his prediction is also valid for the Fisheries Committee or the Parliament plenary.

When it comes to member states, some indication of what they think will be known already tomorrow, Friday 27 April, when fisheries ministers are set to discuss TFCs in Council.

Catch up with the Fisheries Committee hearing via Video on demand

Download the speakers’ Powerpoint presentations:
Seth Macinko, associate professor in the Department of Marine Affairs at the University of Rhode Island/USA and Member of the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in Alaska
Thomas Sterner, Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Sean O’Donoghue, Federation of Irish Fishermen
Frederico Pereira, President of the Federation of Trade Unions of the Fisheries
Paul Ash, Deputy Head of Mission, New Zealand Mission to the EU
Fernando Gonzales Laxe, professor of Applied Economics, University of Coruña, Spain.

Previous article on CFP Reform Watch:
MEPs divided on transferable fishing concessions

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Time: 25th April, 13.00 to 14.30
Location: European Parliament, Brussels, room ASP 3H1
Organizer: Havsmiljöinstitutet, Swedish Institute for the Marine Environment

> Go to registration
> Download programme PDF

The panel will discuss the use of “good” and “bad” incentives for sustainable fisheries and highlight how incentives in the CFP and EMFF proposals can reinforce or work against one another.

In the panel:
Håkan Eggert, Associated Professor in Environmental Economics at School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg
Jesper Rakjaer, Professor and Head of Centre, Innovative Fisheries Management, Aalborg University, Denmark
Chris Davies, MEP, Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe
Gabriel Mato Adrover, MEP, Chair of the Fisheries Committee. Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats)
Isabella Lövin, MEP, Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance
Peter Olsson, Chair Demersal Committee, Swedish FIshermens Federation
Raul Garcia, WWF Spain

Moderator:
Erik Lindebo, PhD, Project Adviser, European Research Council Executive Agency, Brussels

Advance registration is required. A sandwich lunch will be provided. No fee, but numbers are limited.