Union starts Morocco fish talks

By David Cronin

Date: 14/07/05

EU governments look set to take the first step next week towards a fisheries agreement with Morocco since previous negotiations on access to the north African country's waters collapsed in 2001.

The last EU fisheries accord with Morocco expired in 1999. That four-year pact gave 500 European vessels, largely from Spain and Portugal, access to Moroccan waters in exchange for the Union paying €500 million into Rabat's coffers.

But efforts to introduce a successor to the accord foundered in 2001 - after a year of talks. Franz Fischler, the then European commissioner for agriculture, claimed that the Moroccans were asking too much in compensation for fishing in their waters. The Moroccans argued that because Spanish fishermen had focused on 'high-value' species like octopus, squid, shrimp, hake and other white fish, the amount they received in compensation under the previous deal had been inadequate.

On Monday (18 July), fisheries ministers are scheduled to give the European Commission a mandate for starting a fresh round of talks.

Mireille Thom, the Commission's spokeswoman on fisheries, said that any new accord would be "more modest" than the 1995-99 one to reflect changes to the European fleet in the interim. Spanish and Portuguese vessel-owners affected by the non-renewal of that agreement, she added, had been given aid to make a living by other means.

She also said that the emphasis of a new agreement would be on "small-scale fisheries, though not exclusively".

An agreement with Morocco would be part of a series of accords which the Commission is negotiating with African states.

In November last year, the EU signed a new six-year deal with Comoros, in the Indian Ocean. Talks on similar accords with Kenya and Tanzania are under way in a bid to achieve a regional package of agreements which would give the Union greater access to tuna resources in the Indian Ocean.

The accord with Comoros, which came into effect in January, involves a financial contribution of €550,000 per year to its government. A report discussed this week by the European Parliament's fisheries committee questions whether this will help ease hardship in Comoros, a country where the per capita gross domestic product is only €300. The €550,000 sum, it says, will primarily go on administrative costs, with no money going to scientific research on the state of fish stocks in its waters.

Charlotte Mogensen from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) pointed out that tuna fisheries could lead to sharks or marine turtles unintentionally becoming ensnared in nets. This was particularly the case with longline nets, 17 of which will be used by European fishermen under the Comoros agreement.

She urged the EU to take greater account of the ecological consequences of the 'bycatch' of such species, as well as the discard of unwanted fish, when negotiating accords. "The EU has many great fishing nations so it should be leading the way towards more sustainable fisheries, whether in the EU or in distant waters," she added.

Preview of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council, 18-19 July 2005, where EU Ministers responsible for Fisheries were to give the European Commission a mandate for starting a fresh round of talks with Morocco on a new Fisheries Agreement. The previous agreement had expired in 1999 and subsequent negotiations on access to the north African country's waters had collapsed in 2001.

European Commission: DG Fisheries: Publications: Factsheetes: The Common Fisheries Policy: Bilateral agreements http://ec.europa.eu/comm/fisheries/doc_et_publ/factsheets/facts/en/pcp4_2.htm

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