Proposal for a Council Regulation on trade related measures to guarantee the supply of certain fishery products to Union processors from 2013 to 2015 amending Regulations (EC) No 104/2000 and (EU) No 1344/2011 and repealing Regulation (EC) No 1062/2009

The scope of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) extends to European Union autonomous trade measures for fishery and aquaculture products. Since the CFP is currently being reformed, the autonomous trade measures applicable to fishery products should be also revised to ensure further simplification, flexibility, transparency and coherence in line with the objectives of the CFP reform.

The EU supply of certain fishery products largely relies on imports. In the last 15 years the EU has become more dependent on imports to meet its consumption of fishery products: the EU self-sufficiency rate for fishery products has decreased from 57% to 38%. The main purpose of the autonomous trade measures for fishery and aquaculture products is to enable the EU fish processing industry to import third countries' raw materials under reduced or duty-free duties for further processing.

The proposed Regulation will replace, merge and amend, as appropriate, three existing regimes for autonomous quotas and suspensions for fishery products. The existing suspensions will be transformed into quotas with volumes large enough to guarantee the predictability for EU processors.

EUR-Lex: COM(2012)357: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2012:357:FIN

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