Brussels, 10/04/2006 (Agence Europe) - At the meeting of the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the Member States of the EU (Coreper) on 7 April, the Austrian Presidency noted the existence of a qualified majority of Member States in favour of the proposal detailing the modalities for the fishing agreement between the EU and Morocco. Once the EP has returned its opinion, which it is expected to do at its plenary session in Strasbourg from 15 to 18 May (EUROPE 9167), the European Fisheries Ministers will be in a position to adopt the text of the EU/Morocco agreement on 22 May. This will allow the regulation to enter into force on 1 June 2006. In order to facilitate an early agreement, the Spanish and French delegations told Coreper that they would give up on their calls for an adjustment of fishing possibilities in the Moroccan waters. The initial proposal of the Commission is, therefore, maintained, providing: 20 Spanish seiners for deep-sea fishing in the North, 20 Spanish boats for small-scale fishing in the South, 30 bottom longliners for small-scale fishing in the North (20 from Spain and 10 from Portugal), 27 pole-and-line vessels (17 from Spain and 10 from France), 22 trawlers and bottom longliners for demersal fishing (18 from Spain and four from Portugal). This gives Spain 80% of the licences granted to EU vessels.
In principle, the Council agrees with the small changes made to the annual quota of 60,000 tonnes provided for by the EU/Morocco agreement for industrial deep-sea fishing: 48,500t (down from 50,000 in the initial proposal) for Germany (4850t), Latvia (11,155t), Lithuania (13,095t) and the Netherlands (19,400t), 7500t (compared to 6000 initially) for Ireland (2500t), the United Kingdom (2500t) and Poland (2500t) and 4000t (as per the proposal) for France (1333t), Spain (1333t) and Portugal (1333t). In a draft declaration, the Commission indicates that the division of this quota of 60,000t for the industrial fishing of deep-sea species may be revised depending on the state of stocks, and that it is not a precedent for other allocations of fishing possibilities.
The majority of the Member States did not wish to adopt the declaration on the sensitive issue of the application of the agreement in the waters of the Western Sahara. The legal services of the three institutions of the EU believe that the content of the fishing agreement with Morocco is perfectly in line with the international rules of the United Nations (which put the Sahara under Moroccan administration, further to the Madrid agreement of 1976).