In a judgment (C-611/17) published on Tuesday 30 April, the EU Court of Justice ruled against Italy for annulling the provisions of the 2017 regulation on the total allowable catch (TAC) of swordfish in the Mediterranean.
The European TAC for swordfish was set at 70.756% of the total TAC of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), or 7,410.48 tonnes (t) for 2017.
The basis used for the allocation of quotas was the 2012-2015 catch history. Out of the total for the EU, the Italian quota amounted to 3,736.26 t.
However, for Italy, there was no obligation to implement the ICCAT decision on swordfish quotas.
The Court rejected all the Italian arguments and ruled in favour of the Council of the EU, holding that: - although there was no ICCAT decision on the day of adoption of the contested regulation, “this circumstance was not such as to prevent the Council of the EU from adopting the measures it considered necessary to achieve the objectives of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP)”; - the Council of the EU would have infringed the obligations resulting from Decision 86/238 on international acts “if it had fixed fishing opportunities exceeding those granted to the EU by ICCAT, which is not the case”; - the chosen reference period is correct and the principle of ‘relative stability’ was respected. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)