As the much-delayed reform of the EU Common Fisheries Policy draws toward its conclusion, a last-minute deal between the European Parliament and Council may have to be brokered due to the lack of progress thus far on key issues.
For the reform to be concluded under the Irish Presidency, a deal will have to be reached by the end of May so that it can be rubberstamped at the subsequent Council and European Parliament plenary meetings. At the trilogue, the Parliament and Council have thus far stuck closely to their mandates on the core issues – positions that were finalised in February.
Rapporteur for the basic Regulation Ulrike Rodust (S&D, DE) has been backed by a large majority in the Parliament, while the Irish Presidency secured the support of all Member States other than Sweden for the General Approach.
Since the start of the trialogue in March, areas with small disparities have been dealt with by junior officials, but four key unresolved issues remain: maximum sustainable yield (MSY), discards, regionalisation and capacity management. As a result, an additional trilogue meeting has already been added to the six originally scheduled.
At the meeting on 16 April in Ireland, top civil servants from all EU Member States met to iron out their differences on these four key issues. However, no conclusions were reached and at the subsequent Council meeting little progress was made. In order to move the process forward, the forthcoming Coreper meeting on 2 May will see a new Council mandate being discussed, in order to provide the Irish Presidency with more room for negotiation in the trilogues.
In order to broker a compromise deal, the Irish Presidency may present a revised concrete proposal to the Council on 13-14 May, although only one trilogue remains after this date. This would allow them to move toward the Parliament and make it easier to finalise the reform. Although given the lengthy negotiation required to secure the agreement of most Member States to the General Approach, this could prove difficult. Alternatively, the Commission may produce compromise proposals for the remaining unresolved issues.
As trilogues have no publically available agendas or minutes, the process lacks transparency and stakeholder oversight. Moreover, the lack of compromise on key issues in the reform has caused a backlog of the most complex topics being saved for the last minute. Further delays in the negotiation will only serve to put more pressure on the actors in the trilogue.
This makes the possibility of a rushed deal more likely, which could result in a less well-thought through reform with loopholes required to get actors to sign up to the deal. Alternatively, delays beyond June would leave the Lithuanian Presidency to finalise the reform of the basic Regulation, as well as handling the EMFF trilogues and the Council meetings regarding TACs and quotas later in the year. An administrative burden that would likely be beyond even the most resourced Member State.
By squeezing the timelines to such an extent, the trilogue now runs the risk of repeating the same mistakes that have caused the poor state of many EU fish stocks. As the Swedish political commentator Annika Ström Melin pointed out in an article praising the European Parliament’s position on the CFP, entitled “fisheries policy is better with more democracy”, a lack of transparency in the Council has been one of the major reasons behind the failure of the EU to manage its fisheries. An important thought for negotiators to bear in mind whilst they map out the next decade of EU fisheries management in private.