Conservation of fishery resources through technical measures

Technical measures are detailed regulations on fishing practices, such as minimum mesh sizes for nets, minimum landing sizes for the fish, closed areas and fishing seasons.

For historical reasons related to the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, some of these measures were scattered across different legislation, including in one Regulation, which required annual amendment.

The purpose of the adopted text was to integrate the provisions of this Regulation into ordinary secondary legislation. The process also provided the fishing industry with an opportunity to resubmit long-standing demands.

The Greens regarded the document as a technical file intended simply to re-codify existing regulation.

To complicate matters, the Commission only published its proposal very late and the text was granted a mere 15 minutes of debating time in the Committee on Fisheries (PECH).

We therefore decided not to table any amendments and were caught off guard by the lobbying storm that erupted.

The Greens did not succeed in preventing the addition of several new provisions proposed by an alliance of the Scottish and Irish deputies in charge of the dossier, who were keen to do a favour for the fishing industries in their home regions.

Since the new codification had to follow a very constrictive timetable, they were in a strong position to coerce the Council and the Commission by threating to break off the negotiations if their demands were not met. At one point the formal meeting ended and a deal was struck between six negotiators without any proper documentation.

When the Council sent the resulting agreement to Parliament for verification, the Irish ALDE and the Scottish ECR MEPs unashamedly introduced eight further demands.

The negotiations were a total failure for the Greens and set a very bad example of democratic processes within Parliament or other EU institutions.