Brussels, 22/05/2015 (Agence Europe) - In an opinion delivered on Thursday 21 May (case C-124/13), the Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the EU came out in favour of the European Parliament and the European Commission which consider Council Regulation 1243/2012 establishing a long-term plan for cod stocks and the fisheries exploiting these stocks to be unlawful as it is based on the wrong legal basis.
Parliament argues that, given its aim and content, the regulation should have been adopted on the basis of Article 43(2) TFEU, by means of an ordinary legislative procedure with the Parliament acting as co-legislator. Parliament also takes issue with the splitting of the Commission proposal (Council split the proposal into two legislative acts). The Commission supported Parliament and took the view that its exclusive right of initiative had been infringed as a result of the change of legal basis for the regulation at issue.
The Council - backed by the intervening governments (France, Poland and Spain) - disputes the arguments put forward by the applicants. In its view, the contested regulation constitutes a measure on the fixing and allocation of fishing opportunities and as such was correctly based on Article 43(3) TFEU.
The Advocate General proposed that the court: - annul Council Regulation (EU) No 1243/2012 on the long-term plan for cod stocks; - maintain the effects of the annulled regulation until the entry into force, within a period not exceeding six months from the date of delivery of the judgment in the present cases, of a new regulation adopted on the correct legal basis; - order the Council to pay the costs and Spain, France and Poland to bear their own costs.
“It is my belief that the contested regulation was adopted on the wrong legal basis and that, in hiving those provisions off from the rest of the Commission's proposal, the Council acted unlawfully”, says the Advocate General. He states: “In the light of the Court's findings in the Venezuela judgment, I believe that any measure which sets the framework for the fixing and allocation of fisheries opportunities will now fall within the scope of Article 43(2) TFEU”. (Lionel Changeur)