It does happen that bureaucracy works in favour of the fish: a sector request to open closed cod fisheries in the western Baltic because of the extreme winter conditions has been rejected, since the EU consultation route, including the new co-decision process with the Parliament, would “take too much time”.
The Baltic Fishermen’s Network, chaired by Kim Kær Hansen of the Danish Fishermen’s Association, had asked the Commission for dispensation from the April closure in the Western Baltic Sea (ICES Subdivisions 22-24).
The closure is stipulated in the multi-annual management plan for cod of 2007, in order to protect reproduction of the species.
The Commission’s Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE) answered that they could appreciate the problems that cold and ice have caused for fishermen in the Baltic Sea this winter, but that the necessary consultation process would take much longer than the time until April.
Just the co-decision process with the European Parliament, proscribed in the Lisbon Treaty that took force on January 1, would take two to five months.
The Danish Fishermen’s Association brought the problem up at national level with the Danish Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, as well, which went to DG Mare a second time. The reply was the same, however: it is not possible to change the cod management plan with the procedures that are currently laid down and which require consultation with
the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. The only way to deal with such a situation is to take this into account when the rules are made.
Which obviously, in this case, happened on a warmer, sunnier day.