The message from Council is clear: this is their final offer under the Irish Presidency. However, on the key issues Member States have made such minor compromises that rapporteur Ulrike Rodust (S&D, DE), who said “Ministers have made certain concessions but I would have liked to see a more courageous decision”, finds herself in a dilemma ahead of the final trilogue meeting on 28 and 29 May.
If she accepts, the trilogue negotiations will have been a failure for the European Parliament, which voted through an ambitious reform package at the plenary in February. On the other hand if she pushes for an earlier timeline for implementation of Fmsy and a target for Bmsy, an improved text on capacity evaluation and management, and a discard ban which can be effectively controlled, then the Lithuanian Presidency will likely match their Irish counterparts for ambition.
Simon Coveney, the Irish Minister whose team is responsible for negotiating on behalf of the Council, has already made clear that any significant alterations proposed will be rejected. They have managed to come closer to Rodust and negotiate within Council a lowering of the level of catch that fishermen can discard from a final level of 7% to 5% (in 2019), a mention of biomass in the basic Regulation. New text was also inserted to allow for quotas to be increased during the year if there has been a significant change in the scientific assessment of a stock. The question is whether this will appease the Parliament sufficiently to seal the deal.
At the moment, the negotiation hangs in the balance. Over the next ten days, the Parliament’s negotiation team will look over the final package put forward, which is as yet not publicly available, and come to a decision on how to proceed. If they accept it will be a bitter pill to swallow, fish stock recovery will be more uncertain and further delayed and there will be no full discard ban. Moreover, a further complication is that Member States may not be able to access EU subsidy money from the EMFF package in 2014, as that file is itself also much delayed.