Ministers blast EU-Mauritania fish deal

Fishermen say access to fish off Mauritania’s coast has been cut.

European Union fisheries ministers meeting in Brussels today (25 September) expressed displeasure with a new agreement signed between the European Commission and Mauritania over fishing rights. Though the agreement came into effect in August, it must still be backed by member states.

Spanish fishermen have complained that although the deal sees the same payment to Mauritania from the EU budget as the old deal – €70 million annually – access to the fish off Mauritania’s coast has been significantly reduced. The Spanish delegation requested that the deal be discussed.

“It’s not only Spain who declared that they are disappointed with the protocol with Mauritania, there were quite a number of other countries who were not happy with the initialling of the protocol,” said Sofoclis Aletraris, Cyprus’s agriculture minister, at a press conference after the meeting. “I would stress…that the final agreement is for the council to take.”

“I’m going to work with them to find the best solutions, but it’s too early to reject anything,” said Maria Damanaki, the European commissioner for fisheries.

Idle vessels

The ministers also discussed the issue of payments to idle vessels. A large majority of delegations were opposed to the European Commission’s proposal to scrap payments under the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund to vessels kept idle or modernised in port. The Cyprus presidency is looking to reach a general approach on this issue when ministers next meet in October.

CAP reform

A day earlier (24 September), a meeting of agriculture ministers in Brussels showed continued disagreement on many aspects of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform. In a discussion of the single CMO regulation, which stabilises prices through market intervention, there was discord over whether the reform should raise the intervention price.

A group of member states, including France and Spain, were asking for more support and a higher intervention price. But northern European countries including Denmark, Ireland and the UK were opposed to a higher price and defended the Commission’s proposal as adequate.