Just a week after crucial talks on mackerel quotas broke down, EU Fisheries Commissioner Maria Damanaki has taken the first step in blocking Icelandic fishing vessels from landing catches in Union ports.
According to the British Daily Mail newspaper, Maria Damanaki has made a formal request to the European Economic Area (EEA) to meet before 14 January to discuss a possible embargo.
The EEA is a cooperation established in 1994 between the EU and the former EFTA countries Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. According to the treaty, those nations are obliged to adopt all EU legislation related to the single market – except those rules which relate to agriculture and fisheries.
Still, The EEA’s “Protocol nine”, which governs trade in fish, says that countries “may refuse landings of fish from a fish stock of common interest over the management of which there is a serious disagreement”.
Iceland unilaterally raised its annual mackerel quota to 130,000 tonnes last summer – according to EU estimates, it has traditionally been 2,000 tonnes – after increasing water temperature in the Atlantic has made huge quantities of the stock turn north, out of EU waters into areas closer to Iceland and the Faroe Islands, which has also raised its TACs.
Iceland has motivated its increased mackerel quota with a wish to keep its 17 percent share of the North Atlantic catch: when the stock in these waters grows, the Icelandic share should grow, as well.
A complicating factor in the conflict is Iceland’s membership talks with the EU, which opened last July. The first major obstacle, how Dutch and British savers would be compensated for the collapse of Icelandic bank system where they had heavily invested, was done away with recently, but many issues concerning fisheries, Iceland’s most important source of income, remain to be solved.
While Iceland and the Faroe Islands – an autonomous Danish province, but not member of the EU – have chosen to walk their own paths, Norway and the European Union reached a bilateral agreement early in December for mackerel in the north-east Atlantic that permitted catches of 646,000 tonnes, in accordance with scientific advice.
That accord was welcomed by sector representatives in Scotland, one of the major players in the afflicted waters.
“Long-term responsible management for the mackerel fishery is essential for the sustainability of the stock”, said Ian Gatt, chief executive of the Scottish Pelagic Fishermen’s Association.
“It is now up to Iceland and the Faroes to return to the negotiating table and come to a sensible international management arrangement”.