EC/Guinea-Bissau Fisheries Partnership Agreement

2007/0209(CNS)

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.