As each year, the EU fisheries ministers, meeting in Brussels on 11 and 12 December, will seek to agree fishing quotas on the main fish stocks in the Atlantic and the North Sea in 2018.
The European Commission has proposed maintaining or increasing current total allowable catches (TACs) for 53 healthy stocks and reducing them for 25 stocks which are in less good health (see EUROPE 11899). Catch increases are proposed for a number of sole stocks. But the European Commission is also calling for a total ban on the commercial eel fishery at sea. In October, when negotiating 2018 fishing quotas in the Baltic Sea, ministers delayed their decision on a total ban on fishing for eel (see EUROPE 11880). Only two-member states (Sweden and United Kingdom) support the Commission proposal. Difficult negotiations are to be expected, therefore.
A further difficult point in the discussions will, as so often, be sea bass quotas. A number of delegations also oppose the ban on recreational fishing for this species in the north Atlantic between January and June.
Snow crab and Black Sea. As part of these discussions, ministers will also have to give the go-ahead to the agreement struck between the EU and Norway on 2018 TACs for shared stocks in the North Sea and Skagerrak and the exchange of fishing opportunities (see EUROPE 11919).
The delegations of the Baltic States and Poland may be expected to raise the issue of Svalbard snow crabs, which they would like their fleets to be able to fish.
Elsewhere, the Council will formally adopt the regulation establishing the fishing possibilities for sprat and turbot in the Black Sea in 2018, as proposed by the European Commission (see EUROPE 11909). This proposal concerns Bulgaria and Romania which fish in these waters. The TAC for sprat is set at 11,475 tonnes as in the last few years (70% for Bulgaria and 30% for Romania) and, for turbot, the TAC for 2018 and 2019 is the same as the last two years: 114 tonnes shared equally between the two-member states.
Problem of choke species. Spain, on behalf of the north-west regional group of countries (Belgium, Ireland, France, Spain, Netherlands and United Kingdom), will draw the ministers’ attention to the issue of choke species. These stocks are to ensure correct implementation of the landing obligation (the rule on the ending of discarding of fish at sea) which forces fishermen to stop fishing as soon as the quota (for the most limiting choke stock) has been caught. This measure will be implemented from January 2019 (2018 will, therefore, be the last year of the phasing-in of the discard ban). According to the document prepared by these countries, the existing panoply of measures does not offer proper solutions to the risk associated with choke stocks and alternative measures must be found.
Lastly, ministers will be briefed on the outcomes of two conferences: “Our Ocean” (see EUROPE 11878), which took place in Malta on 5 and 6 October, and “Beyond 2020: Supporting Europe’s Coastal Communities”, organised by the Estonian Presidency in Tallinn on 12 and 13 October. (Original version in French)