EU Fisheries Policy Research Articles

Network resilience and EU fisheries policy engagement in third countries: Lessons for post-Brexit governance

This article examines the ways in which third countries can engage with, and respond to, European Union policy-making processes. A novel analytical framework based on the concept of network resilience which consists of an institutional, political and policy dimension is operationalised to understand third country access to European Union policy-making. Empirically, the article examines the experiences of three non-European Union countries, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Norway in the context of the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy. The article concludes by presenting a research agenda based on an in-depth analysis of network resilience and reflects on what the findings mean for future research, particularly within the context of understanding the development of UK–EU post-Brexit relations.

Fisheries co-management, past and present: From the Plan Castellón (1961–1966) for Spanish Mediterranean trawling fisheries to the current EU fisheries policy

Fisheries co-management systems suppose, in theory, an ample participation of stakeholders in the management of marine resource extraction activities. The Plan Castellón (1961–1966) is an early example of an officially recognized and institutionalized co-management system for Spanish Mediterranean trawling fisheries off southern Catalonia and northern Valencian Autonomous Communities, in Spain. Within its 5 years of duration, the Plan Castellón reverted the declining catch trend previously observed for the main commercial species fished in the region. First, this paper critically recounts the development of the Plan, its evolution and ending. Second, by highlighting the dynamics that allowed for or refrained stakeholders participation, we debate how this bottom-up initiative for fisheries management could/has developed in the militarized and highly authoritarian national administration (1939–1975) of Francisco Franco. Thirdly, we discuss the likeliness of replicating and expanding experiences similar to that of the Plan Castellón, by contrasting it to the efforts and challenges for a greater participation in actual fishing co-management arrangements under the frame of the EU Common Fisheries Policy.

Information processing in the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy

AbstractThe policy studies literature is divided on how information processing takes place in policy processes. Punctuated equilibrium theory claims that policymakers tend to process information disproportionately, giving more weight to some incoming signals than to others. By contrast, thermostatic models of policymaking argue that policymakers respond in a more proportionate way. In this paper, we analyse information processing in the adoption of Total Allowable Catches (TACs) under the European Union’s (EU) Common Fisheries Policy. Based on a novel measure for the proportionality of information processing, it shows that over time TACs have become more closely aligned with incoming signals about fish stocks. This development can be explained through a combination of changing discourses around fisheries conservation and institutional adjustments in EU fisheries policy. This analysis has implications for the debate between punctuated equilibrium and thermostatic models of policymaking and our understanding of the effectiveness of EU fisheries policies.

The Contested Commons: The Failure of EU Fisheries Policy and Governance in the Mediterranean and the Crisis Enveloping the Small-Scale Fisheries of Malta

This paper highlights how multi-scalar interstitial policy failings of the EU fisheries policy can directly trigger policy gaps in fisheries management at the expense of artisanal communities, leading to further expansion opportunities for industrial fishing and triggering instability and marginalisation of traditional fishing communities. In order to contextualize and demonstrate this complexity, we explore a detailed scenario of the Maltese waters to show how the development of a national policy portfolio post-EU accession has destabilized long-existing functional fishing governance mechanisms and now pose a direct challenge to the sustainable management of the marine socio-ecological system. Using a mixed-method approach to investigate the partially obscured social, economic and political dynamics which drive marine policy, we demonstrate how the coastal fisheries have become subject to multiple-use competition arising primarily from a burgeoning recreational fishing sector that has benefited from ‘access-enabling policies’, and is, to a great extent uninhibited by fish conservation regulations. Our findings demonstrate how a deeper understanding of the socio-political ramifications of policy processes is necessary to improve the governance and management of contested and congested open-access fisheries.

Maximum sustainable yield from interacting fish stocks in an uncertain world: two policy choices and underlying trade-offs

The case of fisheries management illustrates how the inherent structural instability of ecosystems can have deep-running policy implications. We contrast ten types of management plans to achieve maximum sustainable yields (MSY) from multiple stocks and compare their effectiveness based on a management strategy evaluation (MSE) that uses complex food webs in its operating model. Plans that target specific stock sizes ($B_{\text{MSY}}$) consistently led to higher yields than plans targeting specific fishing pressures ($F_{\text{MSY}}$). A new self-optimising control rule, introduced here for its robustness to structural instability, led to intermediate yields. Most plans outperformed single-species management plans with pressure targets set without considering multispecies interactions. However, more refined plans to "maximise the yield from each stock separately", in the sense of a Nash equilibrium, produced total yields comparable to plans aiming to maximise total harvested biomass, and were more robust to structural instability. Our analyses highlight trade-offs between yields, amenability to negotiations, pressures on biodiversity, and continuity with current approaches in the European context. Based on these results, we recommend directions for developments of EU fisheries policy.

The external and commercial dimensions of the EU fisheries policy: An institutional approach applied to the whitefish case

This paper discusses the connections that exist between several policy areas concerning fisheries, namely fisheries management and regulations in internal and external waters as well as commercial policies. An institutional approach is used to describe the system by indicating the causal interactions and feedbacks that exist between rules, stocks, catches, imports, and prices. The European Union, as one of the major players in the fishing industry and market, is considered as the case study. The key argument of the paper is that when catches decrease, essentially because of the use of inappropriate management tools and strategy, national interest moves from fishers to other categories such as processors and consumers, which involves several changes to external policies. The analysis presented herein shows that this is exactly what is happening in the case of whitefish. Furthermore, the changing habits and preferences of EU consumers have resulted in increasing substitution possibilities between different species, most of which are imported. This fact combined with the reduced level of EU catches means that the EU is decreasingly able to affect international prices.

Exploring the phronetic dimension of stakeholders' knowledge in EU fisheries governance

Fisheries management is said to be in a perpetual state of crisis, both globally and in Europe. The causes and possible remedies of these problems often create political controversy. Is the solution more and better science or more and better politics? Does one need to improve the former, the latter or both? Or is something else missing? This paper investigates these questions by drawing on social theory and theories of knowledge. The issue of science versus politics and the role of different knowledge perspectives from stakeholders in decision-making are discussed with reference to the Regional Advisory Councils within EU fisheries, in particular, the council for the Baltic Sea. It is argued that a lost ‘value-rationality’ and the aspects of phronetic knowledge and research need to be included in the highly instrumental and science-based EU fisheries policy system to establish environmental and social sustainability in the sector.

Project impact in a multi-level context


 
 
 An important growing trend is reliance on temporary organisations and mechanisms such as projects. Projects have been increasingly used in all kinds of organisations, including public sector organisations, and are widely considered as effective and precise management tools. The extent to which current evaluations are able to measure their perceived impact is, however, unclear. Are project evaluations conducted in such a way that the long-term effect of – in this case the EU fisheries policy – can be assessed, and to what extent are the contribu- tions or added value of projects as a form of organizing assessed in the evaluations? The article draws on programme theory to analyse the evaluation criteria used for European Fisheries Fund projects in Finland. The article concludes that a potential mismatch between operational logic between the evaluation system and the project logic exists. It also shows that there is a connection between decisions made to fund projects and the actions that they produce, but that a clear causal relationship measurement of project impact is difficult to establish using current evaluation criteria.
 
 

The EU Common Fisheries Policy in light of the precautionary principle

According to the EU's 2009 green paper on the reform of the CFP, 81% of European fish stocks are overfished despite the fact that the EU has repeatedly committed itself under both international and EU law to maintaining and restoring its fish stocks to levels capable of producing MSY. Here we argue that the EU's repeated enactment of TACs exceeding maximum reproductive potential has violated the precautionary principle and as such constitutes a breach of European and international law. As a policy decision, a precautionary approach to fisheries management requires a continuous examination of scientific evidence. Furthermore, although the EU is endowed with exclusive competence in regard to marine conservation, this competence must be exercised in accordance with the rule of law. Judicial review is an essential component in ensuring the accountability of institutions, however the highly politicized nature of fisheries policy hinders Member States and EU institutions from challenging non-sustainable TACs. Despite efforts to expand stakeholder participation in fisheries policy-making, environmental organizations such as WWF-UK have been denied standing to challenge EU fisheries policy in European courts, leaving potential violations of the precautionary principle unaddressed and denying judicial protection guaranteed under the Aarhus Convention. The ECJ's 2011 decision in BUND v. Bezirksregierung Arnsberg (“Trianel”) may represent a turning point in the Court's interpretation of direct and individual concern in regard to cases instituted by environmental organizations in a precautionary context. Rather than merely developing new policy tools, genuine and comprehensive reform of the CFP also requires an operable legal framework to ensure that violations of the precautionary principle by EU institutions in enacting fisheries policies can be addressed.

Evolution and perspectives of the Fisheries Structural Policy in the European Union

In 2011, the European Commission will make its legislative proposal for the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy public. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the direction the possible reforms to be implemented in the Fisheries Structural Policy will take. In order to do so, we will look at the recent results of the policy and its current situation, and study its trends. The main conclusion we can draw is that the future EU fisheries policy will not undergo major changes, neither in its fundamental principles nor with regard to its main goals or priority action axes. Eventual progress and any adjustments made to such reforms will take place within the ambit of the policy’s specific action measures via the European Fisheries Fund.

Undermining the Integrated Maritime Policy

The European Union’s Integrated Maritime Policy is intended in part to co-ordinate sectoral policies, to achieve joined-up thinking and action and overcome the inconsistency between policy approaches that has led to the degradation of European seas. An integrated governance would be relatively straight-forward if the different interests and actors were operating on the basis of shared values, but they are not. While the fisheries sector, whether large or small-scale, is driven by a commercial imperative which tends towards the greatest extraction of the resource possible, environmentalists would champion the removal of all human impacts, other than redress activity, as the optimum state for the ecosystem. However, the greatest impediment to an integrated approach is the failure to subject the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy to the objectives of the Integrated Maritime Policy. Instead, all decisions concerning fisheries will continue to be made in accordance with the Fisheries Regulation which demands exploitation of the fragile resource. Attention needs to be given to how EU fisheries policy is to acquire values beyond that of commercial extraction for immediate economic benefit so that it may cohere with objectives of the Integrated Maritime Policy and aid the regeneration of the seas.

Venue shifts and policy change in EU fisheries policy

Over the past two decades profound changes have taken place in the European Union's (EU) fisheries policy. Partly these changes have occurred within the EU's Common Fisheries Policy itself, but partly policy change has been effected by the application of environmental legislation and policy instruments to fisheries issues. This article argues that the process of policy change in EU fisheries policy can best be understood in terms of the interaction of policy images and policy venues that is at the core of the punctuated equilibrium theory of policy-making. As a result of the rise of a biodiversity perspective on fisheries issues, environmental policy-makers have become active in fisheries issues, which has led to profound changes in both the content of fisheries policies and the institutional organisation around this issue area.

Representing the individual fishermen: an attitudinal perspective on one PO's membership

As fisheries management has evolved, individual fishermen increasingly have sought some form of collective representation. Producer Organisations (POs) within the EU increasingly embrace this function, and have established a central position in resource management decisions. This paper analyses members' perceptions of one such PO, Shetland Fish Producers' Organisation. Multiple correspondence analysis reveals generally favourable membership perceptions of the PO's operation and functions. With EU fisheries policy striving to identify a compromise to an evermore heterogeneous sector, an organisational structure with proven endogenous acceptance could have important implications for the future direction of fisheries management and its implementation.