The European Fisheries Ministers will meet informally on Monday 22 February, by videoconference, under the chairmanship of Portugal’s Ricardo Serrão Santos, to discuss the bilateral consultations underway with the United Kingdom on fishing opportunities for 2021.
The European Commissioner for Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius and the Portuguese Minister for the Sea, Ricardo Serrão Santos, will give a virtual press conference after the meeting.
United Kingdom The Commissioner will inform ministers on the state of play of the EU-UK consultations on setting fishing opportunities for 2021 (quotas for so-called deep-sea stocks are to cover the years 2021 and 2022).
Two rounds of consultations between the EU and the UK have taken place to date.
Ministers will then exchange views on these consultations and on the Commission’s proposal regarding the EU’s position during the negotiations (see EUROPE 12656/10).
Delegations sent comments on this proposal: Denmark, for example, referred to scientific advice on sand eels and questioned whether it was appropriate to refer exclusively to the implementation of ‘remedial measures’ through ‘joint recommendations’.
Ireland referred to certain fish stocks in the Celtic Sea to avoid too sharp a drop in certain total allowable catches (TACs).
As this is an informal meeting of ministers, the EU Council will deal with the proposal later, a diplomatic source explained.
Following the UK’s departure from the EU, some 100 stocks under shared management are no longer considered, as of January 2021, as exclusive EU fish resources, but as shared resources under international law.
For this reason, ministers agreed at last December’s EU Agrifish Council on preliminary and limited fishing opportunities for the first three months of 2021 (given the absence of an EU-UK deal at that time)
The EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement allows for both parties to set TACs for shared stocks.
The Commission is conducting the consultations and Member States will be fully informed and involved throughout the process.
The Commission is expected to reach an agreement with the UK on 2021 quotas by the end of March. “We hope that these negotiations will result in TACs acceptable to all”, a European source said,
Mauritania. The Spanish delegation will raise this issue in view of the 7th round of negotiations for the renewal of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement (SFPA) of the EU with the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. The negotiations have been difficult. The terms of the current agreement had to be extended twice to allow a new one to be negotiated.
“This agreement, which will expire on 15 November 2021, has been extended for two consecutive years. It will be necessary to reach a balanced agreement with Mauritania”, says a European diplomat. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)