The European Council unanimously adopted a regulation on 27 November that concerns autonomous tariff quotas (ATQs) on certain fishery products coming into the Union from non-E.U. countries, along with rules for managing these quotas.
The regulation, which covers key whitefish species like cod, Alaska pollock, hake, shrimp, and cephalopods, will enter into effect starting 1 January 2024 and expire on 31 December 2026.
ATQs entail a complete suspension or reduction of the duty attached to a limited volume of fishery products entering the region’s borders, and the duties and volumes set by the bloc are specific to each product.
In recent decades, the E.U. has become increasingly dependent on imports to meet demand for fishery products – either because the E.U. doesn’t produce them or because they don’t produce them in sufficient quantities. ATQs aim to ensure that there’s an adequate amount of raw material needed for its processing industry to operate effectively.
Many processors, therefore, have welcomed the ATQs, but fishers and fishery organizations within the bloc have voiced concerns that these regulations allow for third-country products to receive tariff relief while fishery products caught within the bloc are held to higher standards.
In response the European Council said when setting the ATQs it accounted for their potential impact on E.U. suppliers to ensure fair competition between imported fishery products and products of E.U. origin.
“With this regulation, we have safeguarded the competitiveness of our fish processing industry and the supply of European consumers with quality processed fishery products at reasonable prices while taking into account the interests of the E.U. fishing sector,” Spanish Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Luis Planas Puchades said. “We did so only three months after the commission tabled its proposal, ensuring that all stakeholders have legal certainty about the regime which will apply [over] the next three years.”
The ATQs will allow greater quantities of non-E.U. products to enter the bloc with suspended or reduced tariffs, but deteriorating relations between the E.U. and Russia over the war in Ukraine has led the council to refuse Russian-origin fishery products from receiving the benefit of duty-free treatment. Similarly, relations between the E.U. and Belarus are strained for the same reasons, so the council decided to also exclude Belarusian fishery products from the regulation’s scope.
The exclusion of products from Belarus and Russia – notably Alaska pollock, which is a product used in many popular dishes such as fish and chips – will have an impact on trade flow and require adaptation throughout the regulation’s lifespan.
“If, as a consequence, raw materials which are currently not covered by the scope of this regulation are identified as equivalent to those products and urgently needed during the adaptation period, this regulation may be revised to take those circumstances into account,” the regulation said.
In response to the regulation’s unanimous passing, the E.U. Fish Processors and Traders Association (AIPCE) told SeafoodSource that third country-imported raw materials are vital to the E.U. market and help compensate for domestic supply deficits; therefore, the group is pleased the decision has passed well before the end of the year.
“We see a number of positive elements in the proposal for the new regulation,” AIPCE President Guus Pastoor said. “First of all, we’ve succeeded in getting a three-year regulation instead of the two years proposed by the commission. Three years is needed to [achieve] some stability in the markets.”
However, Pastoor emphasized that the AIPCE called for a transition period rather than an immediate cutoff of fish from Russia and Belarus – a call that went unheeded.
“[A transition] would be useful to avoid too much market disturbance because we are talking about a large amount of whitefish,” he said. “We all understand the political climate we live in at the moment. You can debate whether the ATQ regulation is the right instrument, [and] you can debate the timing, but in the end, it’s a political decision taken in difficult times. What matters now is how our members can cope with the new situation and how markets will react.”
European fishing industry body Europêche said it welcomed the denial of duty-free status to Russia and said it hopes the measure will apply to Russian fishery products processed in non-E.U. countries, such as Norway or China, which these countries later sell to the E.U. market.
The organization continued to express concerns, however, that the ATQ system gives away free market access to increased volumes of foreign seafood supplies while E.U. vessels face an “increasing array of rules and restrictions” because the European Commission is “building its latest E.U. fisheries policies proposals under the imperative to tackle climate and biodiversity crises.”
Calculating the new ATQ regulation will grant zero-duty access to more than 900,000 metric tons (MT) of imported seafood, compared to 831,000 MT in the previous regulation, Europêche said this doesn’t adhere “to the fundamental principles of sustainability, reciprocity, and mutual benefit.”
Specifically regarding flatfish, Europêche said there was no need for extra supply of foreign flatfish to the European market and no justification for maintaining an ATQ of 7,500 MT as the species is abundant and “absolutely no shortage in raw material occurs” within the bloc.
It also noted Vietnam still enjoys duty-free treatment despite receiving a yellow card from the E.U. in 2017 for not doing enough to tackle illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
Additionally, Europêche said the “massive entrance” of low-standard, cheap raw material, sometimes stemming from fleets like China’s that have been found to employ IUU fishing practices, creates a price distortion and prevents the European fleet from selling its products domestically.
“The problem is that China’s expanding fishing fleet is depleting the world’s oceans in the very same waters where our vessels operate,” Europêche President Javier Garat said. “Even worse, the unsustainable fish they capture ends up in our market. On top of that, the E.U. is granting tariff derogations to these products without any reason or merit, other than the low price. This has to stop.”
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