THE European Commission have made it clear that legislative power on key fisheries issues will stay firmly in mainland Europe.

But a Commission representative has underlined that plans for a reformed Common Fisheries Policy include implementation of fisheries rules being passed down to member states.

The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, (NFFO) who hold a position on the EC Advisory Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture (ACFA) took part in a recent exchange of views with the Commission on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy.

The NFFO say that in an “exchange of views” with the director responsible for CFP reform, there was an overview of the current status of the CFP reform.

The director said that according to what the EU Fisheries Commissioner had said at a Council meeting held in Luxembourg on June 29, the “status quo” was not an option. Consultation on CFP reform would continue over the summer and finish with a conference that the Commission intended to organise on November 16 in Brussels.

In response to questions from the members, the Commission representative, according to the NFFO, pointed out that the model which was being considered for the CFP decision making process was downstream regionalisation whereby management and policy implementation decisions – implementing rules - would be left to the regions themselves. However the legislative decisions would be taken by either the Council and the EP (European Parliament), the Council (for the TAC/quota and effort) or the Commission. The Commission was prepared to go as far as the Treaty allowed, “without creating new unnecessary bureaucracy.”

Concerning the quantification of the involvement of stakeholders in the consultation process, he said that what interested the Commission was the quality of the advice submitted by RACs and ACFA and not the number of people attending the meetings.

He noted that there had been no change in the Commission's guidance relating to the CFP Reform (including the external dimension), but rather a logical development as a result of the consultation process, and he reminded the participants that the Commission considered the development of  mechanisms to protect and to improve the small-scale fisheries as one of the main objectives of the reform.

The Commission representative explained the procedure for drawing up the Impact Assessment and said that the document would be accompanied by a summary of the consultation process, containing the stakeholders' contributions.

Meanwhile, he added that the Commission considered aquaculture to be an important part of the reform. However, he pointed out that while fisheries was a common policy, aquaculture was not, since responsibility for the latter was shared with the Member States. For this reason, the majority of actions planned at EU level - except for EFF, research, health and trade aspects - were of a non-legislative nature. The Commission wanted to finance innovation and sustainability, and was intending to include aquaculture in a special chapter of the future financial instrument. Aquaculture would also be included in the Commission Communication that would accompany the new CFP Regulation. The Commission representative took note of the suggestion to set up a task force to monitor and implement the strategy in aquaculture.

Health issues were part of the political package, and it remained a central objective of the CFP reform to have healthy fish resources in order to cover the future consumer demand.

Concerning the request to apply the same EU rules to imports from third countries, the Commission representative pointed out that the EU regulation could not be applied outside the EU Member States.  He explained that the ORPs for fisheries management would be strengthened in order to combat unfair competition from third country imports.

In response to the concerns about the social dimension, the Commission stated that the aim of the new CFP was to improve the quality of employment. In this context, the objective for employment would not be a quantitative measure, but one which combined fleet profitability with improvements in social and labour conditions. The Commission was also looking at the possibility of introducing a system of incentives to enable labour conditions to be harmonised in the Member States.