ECJ Advocate General says Council acted unlawfully on Cod Plan
In the long-standing dispute about the Parliament’s powers as co-legislator in the domain of fisheries policy, the Advocate General of the Court of Justice (ECJ) on Thursday supported the Parliament’s plea that the Council was wrong in splitting the proposal for a multiannual cod plan and adopting part of it single-handedly in December 2012, side-lining the Parliament. The contested regulation “was adopted on the wrong legal basis”, he writes, concluding that the law should be annulled.
The judgment is expected later this year.
“The multiannual fisheries management plans are the heart of the new Common Fisheries Policy. They will not happen without Parliament!”, said Alain Cadec (EPP, FR), Chair of the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee.
The issue at hand is the court case (Case C-124/13) on the multiannual cod plan in the Atlantic and North Sea. In December 2012, the Council adopted part of this plan, i.e. the articles containing rules for fixing the catch limits, single-handedly. It claimed that these fall under its exclusive competence under Article 43(3) TFEUwhich provides that the Council, on a proposal from the Commission, is to adopt measures on the fixing and allocation of fishing opportunities. As a consequence, this legal basis excluded the Parliament from taking part in the adoption of the act.
The European Parliament, as well as the European Commission, however claims that these multiannual fisheries management plans in their entirety make policy choices which should be decided under co-decision, i.e. according to Article 43(2) TFEU. Other multiannual fishery plans have been blocked by the Council due to this conflict. The Parliament demands to be fully associated in its co-legislator role to the establishment of the multi-annual fishery plans, which are a key element of the Common Fisheries Policy, and urgently needed.
According to the Advocate General’s opinion, “Articles 9 and 12 of the Cod Plan as respectively replaced and amended by the contested regulation do not simply implement choices made by the EU legislature, but rather define the framework for fixing and allocating fishing opportunities in certain specific circumstances. That is why it is my belief that the contested regulation was adopted on the wrong legal basis and that, in hiving those provisions off from the rest of the Commission’s proposal, the Council acted unlawfully.”
The Advocate General’s Opinion is not binding on the Court who now deliberates on the case and delivers its judgment at a later date. However, in a previous judgment (“Venezuela” judgment), the Court indeed supported a broad interpretation of Article 43(2), thus strengthening the European Parliament’s role as co-legislator in the “pursuit of the objectives of the common agricultural policy and the common fisheries policy”.
Source: European Parliament Press Unit
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