A clear however mostly informal meeting structure is now evolving for Baltfish, a cooperation project between the eight EU member states around the Baltic Sea, spearheading the current regionalisation trend.
The platform, built around the national Fisheries directors, is budding from the EU Baltic Sea Strategy, launched as a pet project by Sweden for its EU Presidency in the autumn of 2009.
The Strategy, launched by the Commission and the upcoming Swedish Presidency in June and adopted by the Council in October 2009, contained 15 “Priority areas”, the ninth of whom being “To reinforce sustainability of agriculture, forestry and fisheries” under Finnish coordination.
Spread over those 15 priority areas were some 80 “Flagship projects”, with “Ensure sustainable fishing” as the sole fisheries project in the original version.
“Develop and improve coordination and cooperation among Member States and stakeholders” (The Baltfish project), “Eradicating discards” and “Encourage sustainable aquaculture production methods”were later added, with Sweden, Denmark and Finland, respectively, as coordinating nations.
The current status of Priority 9 area work was accounted for at a seminar/workshop in Helsinki in November, including a Swedish draft for Baltfish terms of reference and a Commission draft on how to approach the discard problem.
Baltfish, with the general aim that the eight “Baltic” states would appear at future Council meetings with commonly, if not formally, agreed positions, is planned to work on two levels – High Level Group (HLG) and Forum Seminars.
HLG meetings, open only to the member state administrations and the Baltic Sea director of the EU Commission, will be arranged on a regular and seemingly frequent basis. According to the Swedish draft, the HLG will discuss “any issues both inside and outside the scope of the EU strategy for the Baltic Sea Region, to reflect a broad view of regional cooperation. Baltfish will offer an opportunity to seek common goals and strategies and make suggestions and common actions in relevant fora”.
“The atmosphere during HLG-meetings should aim to be less formal”, it added.
The chairmanship, responsible for coordination, will run over twelve months, starting with Sweden until 1 July next year, when Finland takes over.
Although other stakeholders “deemed relevant for the discussions” may be invited to the HLG meetings, it remains to be seen whether e.g. NGOs or the BSRAC – heavily dominated by the sector – will have much influence on those meetings.
Their platform in the project would be instead the Forum Seminars, to be organised by the chairmanship “once or twice” a year. These meetings “should focus on certain topical issues”, the Swedish draft said, adding that representatives for member state governments, the Commission, Helcom and the BSRAC should be invited, along with fishing sector and NGO delegates.
At the Helsinki seminar in November, voices were raised for a more formalised Baltfish decision-making process, but a representative for the Commission emphasised that there was no room for a new level like that, under the Council, at least not “under the current Common Fisheries Policy”.
Iona Jepsena, head of the Baltic and North Sea units in the EU Commission, also presented a draft proposal for how to approach the discard problem in Baltic Sea fisheries. The Council and the Commission decided a year ago to develop a roadmap and to set up Terms of Reference for a technical working group to assess and recommend additional measures to eradicate discards in the Baltic Sea.
She solicited comments to the draft from all interested parties by the end of the year.
As for the two remaining fisheries flagship projects, aquaculture and “Ensure sustainable fishing”, both were still on the planning stage.
On the latter point, where Sweden is coordinating, the salmon issue will be the first priority, and the working group is now awaiting a Commission proposal for a new long-term management plan.