Quintero negotiated in Brussels on fisheries agreement with Mauritania.

The counselor will request that an exception be included for the Canarian fleet.

The Minister of agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and waters of the Canary Islands, Narvay Quintero, will hold various meetings next Thursday, 23 of July, with EU representatives, in which he will request that the new fishing agreement with Mauritania, signed on 10 July and which still must be ratified by the Commission and the European Parliament, includes the possibility of fishing for cephalopods for the Canarian fleet and that it can be unloaded in Puerto de la Luz and Las Palmas.

This agreement does not improve the conditions of the previous one, since it does not address the two main demands of the fishing and port sector of the Canary Islands, because it does not allow access to the fishing opportunities of the agreement to the cephalopod fleet or the unloading of pelagic fishing in the Gran Canaria port..

“We can still try to negotiate an exception for the Canary Islands and that is what we want to do in the meetings we hold with the director of International Affairs and Markets of the Directorate General of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries of the European Commission., Stefaan Depypere – who signed said agreement on behalf of the entire European Union-, and with the Head of the Bilateral Agreements and Fisheries Control Unit in International Waters, Roberto Cesari”, says Narvay Quintero.

The agreement, interrupted since the end of 2014 and signed by the negotiating commission a few days ago in the Mauritanian capital, it will be in force for the next four years..

This document does not make any reference to the possibility of fishing vessels unloading their catches in the Port of La Luz and Las Palmas, forcing the unloading to continue to be carried out in Mauritanian ports..

In addition, does not include one of the greatest demands of the Spanish and Canary Islands fishing sector, the return of the cephalopods to the Mauritanian fishing ground from which they had been excluded in the agreement that expired last December.

The Mauritanian representatives have also not given in on the issue of the country's seafarers, that will continue to be a 60 % of the total crew, a percentage that negotiators have not been able to reduce.

The negotiations for this fishing agreement have lasted almost a year and have shown the harshness of Mauritania's positions when it comes to setting increasingly rigid conditions for the extraction of its fishing..

The MACAPEL cooperation project (Mauritania, Canary and Pelagic), promoted by Canarian and Mauritanian businessmen for the development of investments in Mauritanian port infrastructure, It was conceived as a counterpart and help for the Mauritanians to agree to a percentage of the pelagic fishing catches (currently from 300.000 tons) take place in the port of La Luz and Las Palmas.

However, has not been taken into account and, Therefore, has not served to improve the situation of the last agreement regarding the Canarian fleet.