Ahead of the Common Fisheries Policy evaluation and before the final event of the Energy Transition Partnership for Fisheries and Aquaculture this Tuesday, we need to ask a vital question: do we want a Europe capable of ensuring its food security and sovereignty, or a Europe dependent on imports and vulnerable to external crises?
The COVID 19 pandemic was a wake-up call: without strong domestic food production, Europe is exposed to geopolitical and climate shocks. This applies not only to agriculture but also to fisheries, too often sidelined despite their strategic role and that it has been a common EU policy for over thirty years, supported by a dedicated fund, the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund (EMFAF).
For years, the European Parliament, many Member States, and stakeholders have urged the Commission to address urgent challenges: modernising vessels and renewing the fleet, reducing investment risk, and making fishing and aquaculture professions more attractive.
Today, the average age of European fishing vessels exceeds 31 years. EU fleet renewal requires an estimated €22–36 billion (NWWAC advice). Without modern, safer, and more innovative vessels, how can we reduce fossil fuel consumption, improve working conditions, and attract a new generation of fishers?
Yet regulatory barriers—particularly on vessel tonnage and length—and inadequate financing are blocking this transition. Fleet renewal requires strong political will and sufficient public funding to leverage private investment. The Commission must treat fisheries as a strategic sector and ensure access to appropriate political and financial tools, including for small scale, islands and outermost regions fisheries.
We welcome the new guidelines for the renewal of fleets up to 12 metres in the outermost regions (ORs), but it is necessary to extend this approach to all fishing vessels, without any length-based restrictions, ensuring that the renewal, modernisation, and decarbonisation of fishing fleets in these regions — which are predominantly small-scale and ageing, facing increasing safety risks as well as deteriorating working and living conditions — are effectively supported through dedicated EU funding, with full (100%) financing provided by the EU.
Instead, the opposite is happening. The Commission proposes a fisheries budget for 2028–2034 of just €2 billion, compared to €6.1 billion for 2021–2027— divided by 3. This is unacceptable!
The situation has changed profoundly over the past decade. It is time to move beyond outdated dogmas and adapt the Common Fisheries Policy to realities on the ground, so that sustainable European fisheries can continue to feed Europeans. Effective safeguards against overfishing already exist and others can be developed: quotas, regulation of fishing effort, selective gear, an ecosystemic approach which takes into account other factors that impact the resource, “social” tonnage, energy indicators, etc.
While awaiting the delayed—but necessary—revision of the Common Fisheries Policy, the immediate priority is to present this year an “omnibus” regulation, which, among other priorities, should aim to remove regulatory obstacles to fleet renewal by amending the current EMFAF, in force until the end of 2029.
The European Parliament has already shown the way with its December report on “Decarbonisation and modernisation of EU fisheries, and the development and deployment of fishing gear”. Articles 13, 17, 18 and 19 of the EMFAF regulation, along with targeted amendments linked to the energy transition of fisheries, must evolve. We are ready to work on this.
We urge the Commission and the EU Presidency to act swiftly to advance this work.
Isabelle le Callennec (EPP, French)
Gabriel Mato (EPP, Spanish)
Carmen Crespo Díaz (EPP, Spanish)
Paulo do Nascimento Cabral (EPP, Portuguese)
Sander Smit (EPP, néerlandais)
Marco Falcone (EPP, Italian)
Željana Zovko (EPP, Croatian)
Francisco José Millán Mon (EPP, Spanish)
Fredis Beleris (EPP, Greek)