The European Parliament yesterday overwhelmingly approved new fisheries legislation intended to strengthen the enforcement of international fishing rules and create a more level playing field between European fishermen and vessels from third countries.
The legislation was approved with 559 votes in favour, 48 against and 62 abstentions.
The file was handled by the European Parliament’s Committee on Fisheries (PECH), with Maltese Labour MEP Thomas Bajada acting as rapporteur and leading Parliament’s negotiations on the legislation.
The legislation incorporates into EU law conservation, management and control measures already agreed internationally between 2018 and 2024 through six Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs).
These include the bodies regulating fisheries in the Atlantic, South Pacific, Northwest Atlantic, eastern Pacific, western and central Pacific and Indian Ocean, as well as rules affecting bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean.
The measures cover vessel monitoring, electronic surveillance, transhipment, observer programmes, bottom fishing, fish-aggregating devices, shark protection and the identification of fishing vessels. In the South Pacific, the rules also include a system allowing authorised inspectors to board and inspect vessels on the high seas.
The legislation is partly intended to address a longstanding complaint by European fishermen that EU vessels face increasingly strict conservation and monitoring requirements while foreign fleets operating on the same stocks may face weaker enforcement.
Thomas Bajada said before the vote that Europe needed greater investment in surveillance technology, including the permanent use of drones for fisheries monitoring, and called for stronger action against foreign countries and vessels that repeatedly fail to respect internationally agreed rules.
Enforcement gaps remain
The new legislation, however, does not give the European Union unrestricted authority to police non-European fishing vessels throughout international waters.
The rules operate through the respective regional fisheries organisations, meaning that inspection powers depend on the agreements governing each fishing area.
More importantly, enforcement against foreign vessels still relies heavily on their flag states. When inspectors discover suspected infringements aboard a foreign vessel on the high seas, responsibility for investigating and sanctioning the vessel will often ultimately fall on the country whose flag it carries.
This remains a substantial weakness in international fisheries enforcement, particularly where vessels operate under flags of convenience, opaque corporate ownership structures or jurisdictions with limited willingness or capacity to prosecute fishing infringements.
The European Parliament has itself warned that illegal fishing continues to benefit from flag hopping, flags of convenience and limited transparency over the beneficial ownership of fishing vessels.
Enforcement is also dependent on resources. Satellite monitoring systems, patrol vessels, aircraft, inspectors and increasingly drones are necessary to determine whether vessels actually respect the rules once they leave port.
Parliament has previously warned that giving additional duties to the European Fisheries Control Agency without sufficient financial and human resources could undermine its ability to enforce existing regulations.
The legislation strengthens the legal framework and gives authorities more tools to monitor fishing activity, but it does not eliminate one of the fundamental weaknesses of international fisheries regulation: rules agreed internationally are only as effective as the governments and enforcement agencies willing and able to apply them.
The legislation must now be formally signed by the European Parliament and the Council before entering into force.
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