Pursuant to Article 4(2) of Regulation (EC) No 847/96, Member States may, before 31 October of the year of application of a fishing quota allocated to them, ask the Commission to withhold a maximum of 10 % of the quota and to transfer it to the following year.

Council Regulations (EU) 2018/1628, (EU) 2018/2025, (EU) 2018/2058 and (EU) 2019/124 fix fishing quotas for certain stocks for 2019 and specify which stocks may be subject to the measures provided for in Regulation (EC) No 847/96.

Council Regulations (EU) 2018/2025, (EU) 2019/1838, (EU) 2019/2236 and (EU) 2020/123 fix fishing quotas for certain stocks for 2020.

Certain Member States have requested, before 31 October 2019, pursuant to Article 4(2) of Regulation (EC) No 847/96, that part of their quotas for 2019 for the stocks listed in the Annex to this Regulation be withheld and transferred to the following year. Subject to the limits indicated in that Regulation, the quantities withheld should be added to the quotas for 2020.

For the purposes of this flexibility exercise, the eligibility of requested stock transfers and the state of exploitation of these stocks have been verified and taken into account. Therefore these stocks can be subject to the transfer of quota withheld from 2019 to 2020 in line with Article 4(2) of Regulation (EC) No 847/96.

Article 8 of Regulation (EU) 2019/124 provides for a quota exchanges mechanism for Member States having no quota for certain by-catches. Pursuant to Article 8(3) of that Regulation, the quantities drawn from this pool may not be transferred to the following year. In 2019, The Netherlands benefited from this mechanism as regards cod in areas 7b, 7c, 7e-k, 8, 9 and 10; Union waters of CECAF 34.1.1 (COD/7XAD34) of which unused quantities may not be carried over to 2020. However, the Netherlands also increased their quota for this stock thanks to a transfer of 0,102 tonne allocated in accordance with Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1704. Therefore, a maximum of 10 % of this quantity solely may be carried over to the following year.

In order to avoid excessive flexibility that would undermine the principle of rational and responsible exploitation of living marine biological resources, hinder the achievement of the objectives of the Common Fisheries Policy and deteriorate the biological status of the stocks, the year-to-year flexibility provided for by Article 15(9) of Regulation (EU) No 1380/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council is excluded for the stocks listed in the Annex to this Regulation.

The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Committee for Fisheries and Aquaculture,