International Fishery Agreement (GIFA) with the 

 United States is the only example of this type of 

 international agreement in the northern tier. The 

 EC has, however, negotiated many such 

 agreements with African countries. EC 

 payments to various African countries in 1992-93 

 amounted to an estimated $817 million in the 

 form of licensing fee payments, scientific 

 research assistance, infrastructure development 

 funds, on-shore training facilities, and joint 

 venture arrangements (see Appendix 25). These 

 agreements are critical to the EC distant-water 

 fisheries, providing access for approximately 50- 

 60 tuna seiners and longliners and over 600 to 

 800 trawlers (fish, cuttlefish, and shrimp). ^^ 



• Market access: The EC has negotiated access 

 to fish stocks in exchange for special access 

 programs to the EC market. Under such an 

 arrangement, the EC has in the past offered 

 reduced tariff quota rates for certain fish 

 originating in Canada. 



• Joint ventures: The EC has offered special 

 access to its markets as an inducement to 

 promote joint ventures. This has usually taken 

 the form of an EC umbrella agreement with the 

 coastal country to establish the conditions under 

 which joint ventures could be negotiated. EC 

 companies then negotiate with local partners, 

 usually offering to transfer fishing vessels. This 

 option does not usually involve financial 

 payments to the host country. The EC has used 

 this approach with Argentina in the agreement 

 signed in December 1992. The EC is also 

 offering similar arrangements to other Latin 

 American countries. 



• Multilateral organizations: The EC has also 

 joined many international fishery organizations, 

 including the International Commission for the 

 Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), Baltic 

 Sea Fisheries Commission, Northeast Atlantic 

 Fisheries Commission (NEAFC), The 

 Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic 

 Marine Living Resource (CAMLAR), North 

 Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO), North 

 Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization 

 (NASCO), International Commission for 

 Southeast Atlantic Fisheries (ICSEAF), 

 International Council for the Exploration of the 



Sea (ICES), General Fisheries Council for the 

 Mediterranean (GFCM), and other international 

 bodies. Many of these bodies are responsible for 

 a variety of management regimes affecting both 

 the EC and the coastal countries where EC 

 vessels conduct distant-water fisheries. 



C. nSHERY AGREEMENTS 



The EC has negotiated international fishery 

 agreements creating an extensive network of 

 agreements involving nearly 30 countries stretching 

 from the island of Dominica in the Caribbean, across 

 the North Atlantic and down into the South Atlantic 

 to Argentina andAngola. Other agreements extend 

 EC distant-water fisheries into the Indian Ocean, as 

 far as the Maldives. The authors have obtained 

 considerable details on the EC agreements with 

 European and North American countries, but the 

 available information on the EC agreements with 

 some African countries is less complete.^ Even so, 

 the available information reveals an impressive 

 network of fishery agreements developed by the EC. 

 This network of agreements permits EC fishing 

 companies to mount extensive distant-water fisheries 

 as well as participate in a variety of joint ventures, 

 operating both locally based coastal vessels and 

 distant-water high-seas vessels. The EC has 

 negotiated access for a substantial but unknown 

 number of tuna vessels and trawlers. This effort has 

 proven costly for the EC. The EC reportedly paid an 

 estimated $566 million in 1992 alone for foreign 

 fishing licenses. Early agreements with Morocco 

 allowed 800 to 1,000 coastal vessels to fish off 

 Morocco; the latest agreement has placed a limit of 

 600 vessels on EC countries allowed to fish in 

 Moroccan waters. The licensing payments, however, 

 are only part of the cost to the EC which also 

 provides a variety of other payments for financing 

 research, training, marketing, and other activities 

 required under the various agreements. Both 

 licensing and other payments are substantially larger 

 than the payments initially involved in the earlier EC 

 agreements. The increases reflect the increasing 

 sophistication of the African countries with which 

 most of these agreements have been negotiated. The 

 Africans increasingly realize the value of fishery 

 resources and the EC's need to obtain access to 

 distant-water ground. The political demands by idled 

 fishermen appear to be causing member countries to 

 demand EC funding, even in excess of the value of 

 fish catches obtained. The African countries, as well 



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