17 March 2014
Say what you like about the EU Fisheries Council each December with its all-night circus. At least it does produce timely decisions on TACs and quotas for the following year.
Contrast
this with the disastrous delay of EU and Norway to reach agreement for 2014
until mid March, as the EU Norway process became almost fatally entangled with
the twists and turns of the mackerel dispute between EU, Norway, Iceland,
Faeroes and, belatedly, Greenland.
Unlike
the December Council, there is no mechanism to oblige the coastal states to
reach agreement on shared fisheries within a fixed time. Each individual party
is in a position to block agreement, even at the 11th hour in order to gain
marginal advantage over the others. There is a built-in incentive to escalate
issues rather than resolve them.
Coastal States
The
failure of the coastal states to reach agreement on mackerel speaks volumes of
a dysfunctional system which lacks a dispute resolution mechanism. At the
December Council, the equivalent mechanism is the qualified majority vote which
is binding on all member states. Efforts are made to accommodate everybody but
when the time comes, a vote is taken and a decision is reached.
By
contrast, the mackerel dispute degenerated into a prolonged hit and run
guerrilla war which now cause significant collateral damage, and only narrowly
avoided a complete meltdown of the EU Norway agreement.
The
EU is not blameless in allowing the EU Norway process to be hijacked by the
mackerel dispute. Woeful negotiating tactics under Commissioner Damanaki’s
direct instructions contributed significantly to the mess. And Norway’s own brutal
negotiating tactics smack of opportunism, lack of principle and sheer bad faith,
not normally associated with that country.
In
dozens of ports around the North Sea and beyond, this failure resulted in
misery for thousands of fishermen denied access to their customary fishing
grounds at the time of year that they need to be there. Fishing businesses were
jeopardised by the collective failures of their governments.
When
Iceland is finally brought into the mackerel agreement and the parties have had
time to draw breath, there will time to take stock of the failures of governance
that lay underneath the prolonged mackerel dispute. The need for better
governance at the international level – NEAFC, Coastal States and EU/ Norway is
beyond dispute. Repeated failure has become an embarrassment to the reputation
of the countries involved. The mackerel agreement will last for five years. It
is vital that international fisheries governance in the North East Atlantic is
put on a sound footing a long time before then.
Market Access
In
recent years Norway has increasingly played hardball in fisheries negotiations.
The idea of a partnership between friends has been displaced by a reckless
winner-takes-all attitude, mainly driven by a thirst for more pelagic species.
The main benefit, however, that Norway derives from the annual fisheries
agreement is unimpeded access to the vast European market for its fisheries
products. Under the EEA agreement Norway derives huge economic advantage by
selling into the EU market, free of quota limits or customs tariffs. Vast
tonnages of farmed salmon and Barents Sea cod are sold into the EU on this
basis. But during the annual fisheries negotiations this aspect of the deal is
barely if ever mentioned. Norway is safe in the knowledge that the remoteness
of trade sanctions for irresponsible behaviour in fisheries negotiations, and
the general drive towards liberalisation of the markets backed by WTO rules,
means that it is highly unlikely that this key feature of the fisheries
agreement will come into play to their disadvantage. The EU is a big world player
but powerless because it is unable to respond as an individual country might.