Union supplies of certain fishery products currently depend on imports from third countries. In the last 15 years, the Union has become more dependent on imports to meet its consumption of fishery products. The Union self-sufficiency rate for fishery products has decreased from 57 % to 38 %. In order not to jeopardise the Union production of fishery products and to ensure an adequate supply to the Union processing industry, customs duties should be partially or totally suspended for a number of products within tariff quotas of an appropiate volume. To guarantee a level playing field for the Union producers, the sensitivity of individual fishery products on the Union market should also be taken into consideration.

It is important to provide the fishery processing industry with security of supply of raw fishery materials to permit continued growth and investment, and, most importantly, enable it to adapt to the replacement of suspensions by quotas without any disruption of supply. It is therefore appropriate to provide, in respect of certain fishery products to which suspensions have applied, for a system which triggers an automatic increase of the applicable tariff quotas under certain conditions.

Equal and uninterrupted access to the tariff quotas provided for in this Regulation should be ensured for all Union importers and the rates laid down for the quotas should be applied without interruption to all imports of the products concerned into all Member States until the tariff quotas have been used up.

To ensure the efficient common management of the tariff quotas, Member States should be permitted to draw from the quota amount the necessary quantities corresponding to their actual imports. Since that method of management requires close cooperation between the Member States and the Commission, the Commission should be able to monitor the rate at which the quotas are used up and should inform the Member States accordingly.