12 Licences to fish in third country
waters
| (26626)
9922/05
COM(05) 238
| Draft Council Regulation amending Regulation (EC) No. 3317/94 as regards the transmission of applications for fishing licences to third countries
|
| Legal base | Article 37EC; consultation; QMV
|
| Document originated | 6 June 2005
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| Deposited in Parliament | 14 June 2005
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| Department | Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
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| Basis of consideration | EM of 17 July 2005
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| Previous Committee Report | None
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| To be discussed in Council | No date set
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| Committee's assessment | Legally and politically important
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| Committee's decision | Not cleared; further information requested
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Background
12.1 Before a protocol to a fisheries agreement between the EU
and a third country expires, the contracting parties usually start
renewal negotiations, and, once those negotiations have been completed,
they also sign, in addition to the new text of the protocol, an
exchange of letters on its provisional application. In most cases,
this runs from the day following the expiry date of the previous
protocol until the new protocol enters formally into force, the
aim being to avoid any interruption in fishing activities. As
soon as all these documents have been signed, in the case of agreements
involving the Community, the Commission also starts the procedure
needed to produce a formal proposal for adoption by the Council.
This involves both a Council Regulation and a Council Decision
allocating fishing opportunities between the Member States and
approving the exchange of letters on the provisional application
of the protocol. However, this procedure may take several months,
and the fishing opportunities provided for in the protocol cannot
be used in the intervening period.
The current proposal
12.2 In order to avoid this temporary suspension in fishing activities,
the Commission is proposing that it should be able to process
applications from Member States for fishing opportunities immediately,
and transmit them to the third country. It says that this process
would be based on the method of allocating fishing opportunities
used in the agreement, taking into account the principle of relative
stability.
The Government's view
12.3 In his Explanatory Memorandum of 17 July 2005, the Minister
for Nature Conservation and Fisheries at the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Ben Bradshaw) says that the UK has
concerns that, if this proposal were to be adopted, it would allow
the Commission to by-pass Council procedures and implement, albeit
temporarily, third country agreements which are not in line with
the new third country partnership protocol, even if Member States
have serious concerns over an agreement. He says that the Government
will be taking these concerns forward in the relevant Council
working group when the proposal is discussed.
Conclusion
12.4 We can see that the procedure proposed would, strictly
speaking, enable the Commission to anticipate the Council's approval
of an exchange of letters. On the other hand, such a problem is
presumably likely arise in practice only in a very limited number
of cases where an agreement is not in line with the new third
country protocol and it proves impossible to amend it so to remove
any such discrepancy. Moreover, this concern has to be weighed
against the extent to which the proposal will in other cases benefit
fishermen by avoiding any interruption in their activities. We
would therefore be interested to know how seriously the Government
views the concerns which the Minister has expressed, and in particular
how, in the Council working group, it intends to reconcile these
two conflicting considerations.
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