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Brussels (dpa) - The EU countries continued to wrestle on Thursday morning for the fishing quotas for the North Sea for the coming year, among other things.
Federal Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner (CDU) and her EU colleagues had been negotiating in Brussels all night.
The meeting had started on Tuesday and an extension of the talks was to be expected from the outset.
The negotiations on the catch quotas are traditionally competitive.
This year, there is also the fact that the Brexit negotiations between the EU and Great Britain are still ongoing.
It is still unclear whether fishermen from EU countries such as Germany and France will have access to British territorial waters from January.
Therefore results for the North Sea and the Atlantic can only be preliminary.
Talks with Norway, which also fishes in these waters, are still pending.
The fishing quotas for the Mediterranean and Black Sea were also negotiated.
The EU states set the total allowable catches for certain waters every year.
On this basis, the respective national catches are allocated to the individual countries by means of fixed distribution keys.
The negotiations are based on a proposal from the EU Commission, which is primarily based on recommendations from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES).
Many fish stocks are in a rather poor condition.
It is therefore primarily a matter of reconciling the interests of the fishing industry with environmental concerns.
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Information on the meeting of ministers
Proposals from the EU Commission