Yesterday, the Fisheries Committee voted for the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy.
Re-Booting the Voting Machines
After the voting machines broke down 10 minutes into voting, to be re-booted to work again, the voting went on quickly and mostly in a progressive direction.
But, when all the thousand or so amendments had been voted for some reason the Chair decided not to vote on the adoption of the final report.
Lunch Time is Sacred
Instead at 12:30 pm the Chair stopped proceedings for lunch. The members and audience were confused and smelt some strange last minute games to stop a historic vote.
I hope to post the video of the scrambled and confused minutes later today.
“We Vote At 3 pm“
Gabriel Mato Adrover informed the Committee that everyone should come back at 3 pm because it was in the Committee’s agenda.
Was the Chair such a stickler for the agenda? The answer is yes and no.
Many groups had asked for a short break after the vote on all amendments before casting the final vote. But, the public agenda of the Committee made no mention of the 3 pm vote.
However, I recall from my time in the EP, that the Chair also has a working schedule of the Committee, and I expect that Mr Adrover’s working agenda had 3 pm penciled in for the vote.
We Will Vote On This Until We get It Right
As we now know, the fisheries committee duly came back at 3 pm to vote 13 votes for reform, 10 against, and 2 abstensions. Indeed, the vote was done twice. The first time around 14 MEPs voted for reform and 10 voted against.
Who Voted for What
I am trying to find out if there is a record of how the MEPs voted. In the UK Parliament the results of how MPs vote are made public. I am not sure if the same is true in Brussels.
3rd Time Lucky
According to the fishing committee’s news, there is a new result.
