This evening, the Council is expected to conclude their discussions on the basic Regulation of the CFP reform and provide the Irish Presidency with a revised negotiating mandate for the upcoming trilogue meetings. Unless Member States compromise amongst themselves to move away from the General Approach, negotiations with the European Parliament will break down causing further delays to the already much drawn out CFP reform.
The Irish Minister whose country holds the EU Presidency, Simon Coveney, has sought to be assertive with both the Parliament and his fellow Ministers in the hope of securing a deal. At the opening of the Council meeting he emphasised the need for Member States to be flexible in order to break the deadlock, although the subsequent statements from a significant portion of Ministers were not conducive to the spirit of compromise.
Coveney also warned the Parliament’s rapporteur Ulrike Rodust (S&D, DE) that if she held out for a better deal than would be offered after this Council meeting, discarding would continue for some time and she would have to wait until the next Presidency to have further negotiations. Rodust hit back by telling the Council that “we are ready to compromise, but won’t support a non-reform. Stop overfishing and wasteful discards!”
Many Ministers are however keen to continue overfishing and merely reduce discards, rather than ban them. This intractability means that implementation of the CFP reform could be delayed for a second year unless a deal is struck tonight, with fish stock recovery also being postponed.
A recent study, Neubauer et al. 2013, has been used by WWF Germany to call for the Parliament’s proposals on MSY to be adopted because “if their proposal was implemented 75 percent of EU stocks could recover within the next 10 years.” By contrast “the later F is reduced to Fmsy level, the longer recovery takes and the higher the uncertainty about whether a recovery can be attained….(Council’s proposals) would continue to expose already overfished stocks to catch levels that are too high and have adverse effects, causing long delays in stock recovery.”
The message to Minsters is clear: act now, recover stocks, then realise the benefits.