Brussels, 16/12/2011 (Agence Europe) - Mauritania and the European Union (EU) failed on Thursday 15 December to agree the terms of a new fisheries agreement at the last negotiations before expiry of the current four-year agreement which was concluded in 2008, the two sides announced in Nouakchott. The current agreement allows Community vessels from 12 member states to fish in Mauritanian waters. It is the largest agreement, both economically and financially, ever concluded between the Community and a non-EU country.
This fifth round of talks was to be the last but it did not bring the conclusion of a new agreement, said Mauritanian negotiator Sheik Ould Ahmed.
In terms of finance, “we failed to reach agreement, the EU being of the view that the compensation demanded by Mauritania was too great and its counter-proposal fell below the minimum negotiable”, he said.
“There was disagreement over the evaluation made by each party of fishing effort, but we will have the opportunity to consider this further before the next round of talks”, Stefaan Depypere, an official with the European Commission's Directorate General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, told AFP.
The current agreement, which runs out on 31 July 2012, allows EU vessels to operate in Mauritanian waters with financial compensation of €305 over the four years for the Mauritanian fishing sector.
Neither side was prepared to disclose its financial proposals but they said that they had agreed on other points, so that a framework for future discussions was there. They indicated that the areas of agreement included transhipment of catches in the port of Nouadhibou (in the north-west of the country) and landing of bottom trawling products in the same port. Sixty per cent of seamen working on the European vessels authorised to fish in Mauritanian waters should be Mauritanian, and 2% of their pelagic (high seas) catch should be for local fish merchants. The two sides agreed, too, to push the fishing grounds out to 20 miles from 13 currently (32 kilometres instead of 21) and to set up buffer zones to protect the resource, Sheik Ould Ahmed said.
This failure to find agreement comes just the day after the EU-Morocco fisheries protocol was ended, requiring European vessels to leave Moroccan waters immediately, much to the chagrin of Spain. (LC/transl.rt)