Brussels, 26/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - The Council of the EU acknowledged the report made by the European Court of Auditors last September on assistance to the aquaculture sector (EUROPE 11156). In its conclusions, which will soon be adopted, the Council of the EU admits that “the measures to support the sustainable development of aquaculture have not been sufficiently well designed and monitored, in part at Union and to some extent at national level, to achieve the expected results within the examined period”.
The European Court of Auditors' report focuses on implementation of support provided to aquaculture through the European Fisheries Fund (EFF) for the 2007-13 period.
The Council underlines that the negative effect that the financial and economic crisis have had on the project selection and execution, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises, and stresses that support for aquaculture faces inherent challenges such as securing adequate access to space, long licensing procedures and strong external competition. It also acknowledges the Court's analysis of cases of significant stock losses due to predation, which negatively impacted on the achievement of results.
Noting that the EFF will continue to be utilised until end-2015, the Council expects that “final results of the support for aquaculture will improve compared to the period examined by the Court”.
Similarly to the European Commission, it considers that the new Common Fisheries Policy and the EMFF (European Maritime and Fisheries Fund for the period 2014 to 2020) “provide a clearer framework to support the sustainable and cost-effective development of EU aquaculture”. It also welcomes the fact that some of the Court's recommendations have been reflected in the design of aquaculture support under the EMFF (the common strategic guidelines, ex ante conditionality, guidelines for facilitating the application of the Water Framework Directive and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive in the aquaculture sector).
The Council underlines: - the need to improve the absorption of funds and notes the related efforts undertaken at national level, in particular to integrate support for aquaculture in spatial planning, to raise, where necessary, the operators' awareness of support measures, and to strengthen the environmental aspects of support measures; - welcomes the common monitoring indicators and reporting standards developed by the Commission and expects them to be instrumental for improving the monitoring and transparency of programme execution and of results. (LC)