The Committee
on Fisheries adopted the report by Luis Manuel CAPOULAS SANTOS (PES,
PT) amending, under the consultation procedure, the proposal for a regulation
on the conclusion of the Fisheries Partnership Agreement with Guinea-Bissau.
The principal amendments
are based on the transparency and improvement of information provided by the
European Parliament on the implementation of the agreement. In particular,
Members call on the Commission to provide the Parliament with the following
information:
- the conclusions
of the meetings of the joint committee referred to in Article 10 of the
Partnership Agreement, in order to better evaluate the agreement;
- an annual
report on the results of the multiannual sectoral programming planned
for the protocol (in order to discover whether the compensation paid by
the EU is accurately calculated and whether it does, in fact, encourage
sustainable exploitation of Guinea-Bissau’s fishery resources) and on
the adherence of Member States to the demands in terms of catch reporting
arrangements (if this were not the case, the Commission could refuse
fishing licence applications made by these countries the following
year);
- a report on
the application of the agreement and the conditions under which it was
implemented, during the final year of the protocol's validity and before
another agreement is concluded on its renewal; on the basis of this
report and following consultation with the European Parliament, the
Council shall grant the Commission a new negotiating mandate with a view
to the adoption of a new protocol.