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The Danish Fisheries Agency has not found any reason for cases to be reopened in the calculation of quota concentration 2104-2016
As part of the follow-up of the Chamber Advocate’s administrative inspection, the Danish Fisheries Agency has made a renewed assessment of whether there is a basis for resuming cases of quota concentration from the period 2014-2016.
During the investigation, the Board has not found any cases that should be reopened because a recalculation of quota concentration would not lead to a different decision (permission for or refusal to transfer ownership shares or quota shares).
Back in 2018, the Chamber Advocate’s Administrative Inspection examined, among other things, The Danish Agency for Agriculture and Fisheries’ amendment of the Executive Order on Regulations in 2014 in relation to the calculation basis for the quota concentration for the IOC.
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Before 2014, the calculation of the quota concentration was made on the basis of Denmark’s initial quota per. 1st of January. The initial quota is the quota that Denmark will be allocated by the EU at the beginning of the year. If the initial quota was not set at the beginning of the year, the calculation was to be made on the basis of an average of the three previous years’ quotas. After the change in 2014, the calculation was to be made on the basis of an average of the previous three years’ final Danish quotas.
At the beginning of 2017, the Danish Agency for Agriculture and Fisheries stated that the Agency’s calculations of the quota concentration in the period from when the change came into force on 15 October 2014 until 2016, had not actually been made on the basis of an average of the previous three years’ final Danish quotas. . The Board decided in February 2017 that the calculation basis should be corrected forwards, but that no corrections should be made backwards.
The Advocate General criticized this decision, as no evidence could be found that the Agency made an assessment of whether there was a need for cases that had already been decided to be reopened. The Board has therefore investigated whether some fishermen have been allowed to buy more quota shares than permitted, or whether some fishermen have been refused purchase of quota shares, even though they would not have violated the rules on quota concentration using the correct calculation basis. The Board assesses that there are no cases that would have led to a different result.