Proposal for a Council Regulation amending Council Regulation (EU) 2015/2265 opening and providing for the management of autonomous Union tariff quotas for certain fishery products for the period 2016 to 2018

Council Regulation (EU) 2015/2265 opening and providing for the management of autonomous Union tariff quotas for certain fishery products for the period 2016 to 2018 was adopted on 7 December 2015. The objective of the Regulation is to ensure the competitiveness of the European Union processing industry by guaranteeing an adequate supply of fishery products to the industry without jeopardising the Union production of fishery products. To this end, the regulation reduces or suspends import duties for some fishery products under tariff quotas of an appropriate volume. It also specifies the processing operations under which the use of tariff quotas is available (‘qualifying operations’) or not available.

Since the Regulation was adopted, some EU processors and Member States have informed the Commission that the Union processing sector cannot adequately use the tariff quota with order No 09.2760 (whole hake and Pink cusk-eel). They say this is because the qualifying operations for this product do not include ‘slicing’. The Union processing industry states that around 95% of this tariff quota would be used for processing it through slicing. It is therefore necessary to introduce slicing as a qualifying operation to ensure the use of this quota and the competitiveness of this specific sector.

EUR-Lex: COM(2016)315: Follow the progress of this proposal through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2016:315:FIN

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