Brussels, 06/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission adopted a proposal on Wednesday 1 June that seeks to bring a technical amendment to Regulation 2265/2015 of 7 December 2015 which opens and provides for the management of autonomous EU tariff quotas for certain fishery products for the period from 2016 to 2018.
Since the Regulation was adopted, some EU processors and member states have informed the Commission that the Union processing sector cannot adequately use the tariff quota with order number 09.2760 (whole hake and Pink cusk-eel). They say this is because the qualifying operations for this product do not include “slicing”. The Union processing industry states that around 95% of this tariff quota would be used for processing it through slicing. It is therefore necessary to introduce slicing as a qualifying operation to ensure the use of this quota and the competitiveness of this specific sector.
The objective of the 2015 regulation is to ensure the competitiveness of the European Union processing industry by guaranteeing an adequate supply of fishery products to the industry without jeopardising the EU production of fishery products. To this end, the regulation reduces or suspends import duties for some fishery products under tariff quotas of an appropriate volume. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)