Transitional provisions concerning the temporary reallocation of fishing opportunities under existing protocols
Article 47
1. By way of derogation from Article 12, for those protocols to SFPAs that are in force or are provisionally applied on 17 January 2018, the procedure for temporary reallocation of fishing opportunities set out in this Article shall be used until the expiry of the protocol in question. 2. In the context of an SFPA if, on the basis of the requests for transmission of applications referred to in Article 11, it appears that the number of fishing authorisations or the amount of fishing opportunities allocated to the Union under a protocol are not fully utilised, the Commission shall inform the Member States concerned and shall request them to confirm not making use of those fishing opportunities. The absence of a reply within the deadlines, to be set by the Council upon the conclusion of the SFPA, shall be considered as confirmation that the vessels of the Member State concerned are not making full use of their fishing opportunities in the given period. 3. After confirmation by the Member State concerned, the Commission shall assess the total non-utilised fishing opportunities and shall make that assessment available to the Member States. 4. Member States wishing to make use of the non-utilised fishing opportunities referred to in paragraph 3 shall submit to the Commission a list of all vessels for which they intend to request a fishing authorisation, as well as the request for the transmission of applications for each of those vessels, in accordance with Article 11. 5. The Commission shall decide on the reallocation, in close cooperation with the Member States concerned. If a Member State concerned objects to that reallocation, the Commission shall, by means of implementing acts, decide on the reallocation taking into account the criteria laid down in paragraph 8 of this Article, and shall notify the Member States concerned thereof. Those implementing acts shall be adopted in accordance with the examination procedure referred to in Article 45(2). 6. The transmission of applications in accordance with this Article shall in no way affect the allocation of fishing opportunities or their exchange amongst Member States, in accordance with Article 16 of the Basic Regulation. 7. The Commission shall not be prevented from applying the mechanism referred to in paragraphs 2 to 5 until the deadlines referred to in paragraph 2 are finalised. 8. For the reallocation of fishing opportunities under this Article, the Commission shall take into account, in particular: (a) the date of each of the requests received; (b) the fishing opportunities available for reallocation; (c) the number of requests received; (d) the number of requesting Member States; and (e) if fishing opportunities are fully or partly based on amounts of fishing effort or catches, the fishing effort expected to be deployed or the catches expected to be made by each of the vessels concerned.