I thank the committee for the invitation to provide an update on the Common Fisheries Policy reform process which is currently under way. The Common Fisheries Policy, CFP, is the overarching policy framework governing fisheries and the wider seafood sector in the European Union. The policy was first put in place in 1983 after some agreement on principles in the mid-1970s. Important elements of the reform process, which occurs every ten years, are expected to be concluded during the Irish EU Presidency.
The reform on this occasion is different to others in that it is the first one to take place under the provisions of the Lisbon treaty. In previous reforms, the Commission proposed the reforms, there was consultation and dialogue, the Council considered it and then decided on it. Under the Lisbon treaty arrangements, the Commission makes its proposal and then both the European Parliament and the Council take positions on it. When those positions are cleared and settled, the negotiations begin between the Parliament and the Council in the co-decision process to arrive at a new reform. This is one of the first times the co-decision process has been used on a complex EU policy area, so it is very much uncharted territory.
The process was commenced in 2009 by the then European Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Mr. Joe Borg, when he published a Green Paper on reforms of the policy. In it he suggested significant changes to the way the policy operated by moving to a system based on fishing effort while changing the current parameters which govern the policy. In Ireland, the then Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food with special responsibility for fisheries and forestry, Tony Killeen, appointed Dr. Noel Cawley to head the consultation process with the fishing industry and other stakeholders. They generated a response document to the Green Paper which was published in 2010 and set out Ireland's position on the review. Many other member states engaged in a similar exercise.
Following this consultation exercise, the Commission changed direction and brought forward new proposals which moved away from the proposal to base everything on fishing effort to one now based on transferable fishing concessions or individual transferable quotas and a market-based system which privatised fish quotas. Since this was announced, it has undergone consideration and substantial change.
CFP reform deals with three policy regulations. First, there is the basic policy regulation which sets out the framework, general principles and structure of the reform. There is a regulation on the common organisation of the market. Both these regulations are underpinned by a separate financial instrument, the European maritime and fisheries fund.
The main potential benefit of the policy system for Irish fishermen is that it provides a system which aspires to the structured and sustainable management of international fishing activity in each of the key areas of interest to them. Fishing in Ireland has been an international activity for many years, involving our and many other fleets. In addition, the CFP provides stable arrangements for access to the large and most valuable seafood market in the world, the EU's. Exports to this market account for over 80% of Irish seafood products. Ireland's overarching goal for the new CFP is for a sustainable, profitable and self-reliant industry that protects and enhances the social and economic fabric of rural coastal communities dependent on the seafood sector while balancing these objectives with the need to deliver sustainable fisheries for future generations.
The most recent development on CFP reform was at the last fisheries Council meeting in February. At that meeting, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Coveney, as President of the Council, was successful in brokering a political agreement for the introduction of an EU-wide discards ban and reaching a Common Position on the overall structure of the CFP framework regulation. The outcome was 26 member states voted in favour of the package while one voted against. All the major fishing nations supported the package. In the tradition of fisheries negotiations, it finished at 6.30 a.m., so it was consistent in that respect.
The Common Fisheries Policy in the February Fisheries Council and the CAP result last evening are at the same point in the process. In terms of the CAP result last night, the Council arrived at a common position on the proposal. In February, the Council arrived at a common position in regard to the CFP.
That historic decision in February was of critical importance to the future of fisheries and, aligned to earlier decisions taken by the Council on a wide range of conservation measures, was an expression of the collective will of the Council in terms of the reform. One of the headline elements of the reform was the ending of the current discard practices in European fisheries and promoting a new regime of sustainable fishing practices in the European fishing fleet.
February's decision in reaching a Council general approach on all aspects of a reformed basic policy regulation was also important in that it allowed the Irish Presidency, on behalf of the Council, to engage directly with the European Parliament and Commission with a view to reaching an overall political agreement on the reform Common Fisheries Policy during the Irish Presidency. In advance of the Irish Presidency, the Minister set out the ambition to try to bring the Common Fisheries Policy discussion on the core elements to a political agreement during the Irish Presidency. As I said, the process has been going on since 2009.
In the January Council, the Minister set out a work programme for each of the Council's and each of the months of the Irish Presidency intended to deliver, if possible, political agreement by June. The Council unanimously supported that work programme and that enabled the Irish Presidency to come forward in February with the proposal for the general approach. The agreement on that has now enabled the negotiations to commence with the European Parliament.
While the Council has a clear position, the February agreement is simply the Council's position. The European Parliament also arrived at its position in early February and that position differs from the Council's in many respects. Some of the differences are minor and there is a reasonable possibility of getting political compromise on those. However, some of the other differences are significant.
In general, the Council is looking for a more demanding approach in terms of some of the key issues, such as the discard ban and achieving maximum sustainable yield in fish stocks. Achieving a political agreement between the Council and the European Parliament on those core issues remains a very significant challenge.
Turning to the decision taken in February on the discards ban, which is probably the most high profile element of the reformed Common Fisheries Policy, the Council has decided for practical reasons to support a phased application of a ban across fisheries in European waters. In terms of the Irish position, leading into that, Ireland published a discard atlas two years ago to show the scale and complexity of the problem associated with discards. That discard atlas was intended to get people to focus on what was involved in reaching a decision on discards. There has been significant discussion with industry and between member states on how, in practical terms, a discard ban could be agreed. That discussion led to the decision of the February Council.
The discard ban the Council proposes would be phased in across European fisheries starting in January 2014 with pelagic fisheries. That will impact on the Irish fishing fleet targeting small pelagic species, such as mackerel, herring, horse mackerel, blue whiting and boarfish, in addition to those targeting tuna. While any discard ban will be challenging, it should be less so in the case of the pelagic fisheries where one has targeted and clean fisheries. Given that Ireland has its most substantial quotas in pelagic fisheries and, therefore, is a big stakeholder in regard to some of those stocks, it is in our interest that discards be eliminated from pelagic fisheries as soon as possible.
In January 2015, the ban will be introduced in the Baltic Sea but that will have no direct impact on Irish fisheries. January 2016 will see the ban rolled out in the North Sea and south western waters and for the Irish fleet, it will apply to cod, haddock, whiting, saithe, prawns, common sole, plaice and hake. Other fisheries for species subject to catch limits will also be subject to a ban from 2016. The ban that will come in, in terms of the white fish fisheries which will start in 2016, will apply to the main species that define the fishery. For lesser species, it will have to be applied to all the species by 2018 and from January 2017 and not later than January 2019 for all other species in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, all Union waters and in non-Union waters not subject to third country sovereignty or jurisdiction. Effectively, by 2019, if the reform is implemented in the way the Council foresees it, then there will be a discard ban in place for all species subject to catch limits or in the Mediterranean subject to minimum size by 2019. That will be a significant change from practice heretofore.
The discarding issue has always been contentious and resolving it will be difficult given the divergent views on the associated management tools needed to make a discard ban a reality in practice. Resolving this issue is a major step in securing the long-term sustainability of stocks in European waters. The timeframe set for the roll out of the discard ban is ambitious, but practical, and will need to be implemented by specific management tools to ensure its delivery. That has been clearly recognised by the Council which includes a number of tools to support the effective delivery in its general approach. This involves areas such as selective fishing and essentially trying to avoid unwanted catches.
The European Parliament has voted on a more simple approach without providing a similar range of tools in its proposal. Effectively, the European Parliament does not envisage a phasing in within a fishery but that on a certain date all of the species within that fishery would be subject to the discard ban. Finding a compromise between the position of both of the institutions will be a significant challenge which will have to be addressed by the Irish Presidency.
In the reform, it is also important from a conservation sustainability perspective to secure agreement on how the concept known as maximum sustainable yield, MSY, will be delivered. This is essentially a target stock size which one is trying to achieve in regard to each of the fish stocks so that one rebuilds the fish stocks and is thereby able to sustain higher catches on a sustainable basis into the future. The Council has taken a practical approach to MSY which is to manage the fishing exploitation rates at levels capable of producing MSY by 2015, where possible, and for all stocks by 2020. Effectively, we will be going through a transition period up to 2020. The 2020 date is an international obligation the EU has to achieve MSY and there is an alignment between finishing the implementation of the discard ban everywhere in 2019 and achieving MSY by 2020.
The application of MSY means only taking a proportion of the fish in the sea that is the right size to let the stock grow and reproduce at their most productive level. The European Parliament, in its position, wants fishing mortality which is the amount of fish killed in a particular year set by 2015 and, in its view, that should allow the fish stocks to recover by 2020 at the latest above levels capable of producing MSY and all recovered stocks to be maintained at these levels. The European Parliament is, therefore, setting a biomass target by 2020 rather than a fishing mortality level. The Council is focusing on the amount of fish being killed, the percentage of the stock, while the European Parliament is setting a level for the biomass.
That represents quite a difference in terms of fisheries management.
Total allowable catches are allocated among member states. There has been traditional dissatisfaction in Ireland with the share of the relevant total allowable catches which Ireland secured at the outset of the Common Fisheries Policy. That has been an issue through each of the reforms in 1983, 1993 and 2002, and it has been an issue which has remained relatively unchanged through that period. The share that Ireland received of the quotas available at the outset was determined by what is known as the system of relative stability, based on the historical fishery patterns in the confines of the set management areas. That system has continued and not changed through the reforms of 1993 or 2002. There is no support in the Council for a change in the traditional quota allocations in the current reform either and the Commission has not proposed any changes either in the Green Paper or the Commission proposal. This is equally true of the European Parliament.
However, on a positive note, under the CFP arrangements agreed in 1976, a system of so-called Hague preferences was put in place under which Ireland gets an enhanced share of certain key quotas on which we are traditionally dependent if the share falls below certain set levels. The CFP reform proposals as agreed by the Council envisage retaining this system in the way it has operated previously, that is, the Council of Ministers must endorse the implementation of the Hague preferences each December. While Ireland has been successful each time it has invoked the system of Hague preferences, it has proved difficult to achieve because of reservations and opposition from some member states which lose out from its implementation. It only gets invoked when the stocks are low, and therefore everyone is allocated low quotas. When it is invoked, it reduces the quotas of others and this is why it always meets opposition.
Ireland had sought that the Hague preferences be permanently built into the mechanism for setting annual fishing opportunities but there was no appetite from key member states at the Council and political agreement for this course of action was not possible. However, we have succeeded in securing the Council position in retaining the Hague preferences in the way they have been included from the outset at the CFP.
The European Parliament's position sees the Hague preferences as a permanent feature of the total allowable catch setting exercise under a new CFP. However, securing the agreement of the Council to the Parliament's view is a very difficult challenge in light of the strong opposition from almost all member states. Clearly, the important issue here is not to lose the Hague preference provision that has been in place since 1983.
How will the process of CFP reform unfold from here? Since the Council has now reached its political agreement on the full general approach on the basic regulation and on the common organisation of the market, Ireland, in its role of EU Council Presidency, has a negotiating mandate for discussions with the European Parliament. Yesterday, the first round of trilogues, meetings between the Parliament, the Council and the Commission, took place in Brussels. There is an intensive programme of negotiations set out weekly from here on into April and then it will resume again shortly afterwards. The trilogues have also taken place on the common organisation of the market and we are moving to the second round in that area. The trilogues are an intensive process under the Lisbon treaty whereby there is an attempt to negotiate the agreed Council position and the agreed Parliament position into an overall agreed text. This is especially difficult given the difficulty experienced in getting the agreement in both the Parliament and the Council. Anyway, the Parliament had a 500 to 100 vote in favour of the position it adopted while the Council has a 26 to one agreement on the position it has adopted, but there are approximately 300 points of difference between the two positions. Therefore, trying to negotiate movement between these two positions is the challenge.
The Cyprus Presidency secured agreement on a partial general approach to the European maritime and fisheries fund at last October's Agriculture and Fisheries Council. However, the vote of the PECH committee in the European Parliament on the fund has now been delayed until the end of May. Given that timeframe, it is considered unlikely that the Irish Presidency will be able to commence negotiations with the Parliament during its course. However the Irish Presidency will continue to work on the fund dossier following the vote in Parliament with a view to enabling the Lithuanian Presidency to commence its negotiations with the Parliament.
Given all the institutions involved, the timetable for the reform is changing on a regular basis. At present the ambition in terms of the basic regulation is to try to conclude the negotiations with the European Parliament by June. In terms of the Common Market organisation, the ambition is to try to reach final agreement in April. Given that the Parliament will not have voted until May in its committee and will not have taken a plenary vote until June, it will be difficult to conclude agreement on the fund under the Irish Presidency.
I hope that gives an outline of the reform process to date and where we stand. We are happy to take any questions that members wish to pose.