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Europe’s seas face increasing pressure from human activities. This briefing, the first in a series, addresses the need to transition to sustainable fisheries. It argues for an ecosystem-based approach to sustainably exploiting marine resources and moving away from adverse practices.

Key messages

Fisheries rely on healthy and productive marine ecosystems, but Europe’s seas are generally in poor condition due to increasing pressures from human activities, including climate change.

Overfishing, bycatch and habitat degradation are the primary drivers of declining marine biodiversity. Around 40% of fish and shellfish populations in Europe’s seas are still not in good status or fished sustainably.

Marine protected areas currently cover 12.1% of the EU’s sea area but provide little or no relief. Only 2% have management plans in place and less than 1% offer strict protection, including from fishing.

A range of clear, proven, beneficial measures are available for the EU and its Member States to address the ongoing biodiversity, pollution and climate crises. Such measures include ensuring all harvested stocks are exploited at sustainable levels, promoting low-impact activities, and establishing a large-scale, well-designed and effectively-managed network of marine protected areas.

Additionally, phasing out adverse practices, such as overfishing, bycatch and the use of fishing gear that detrimentally affects marine ecosystems, is crucial for further fostering a sustainable future for fisheries.

Fisheries need healthy, productive and resilient marine ecosystems

Marine fisheries rely on the ocean’s renewable living resources that in turn depend on healthy, clean, non-toxic, productive and resilient seas. Yet, human activities at sea and on land heavily impact marine ecosystems, threatening marine biodiversity and species’ regeneration (EEA, 2019; EEA, 2021). More than 93% of Europe’s marine areas are already under pressure from human activities (EEA, 2020a). This situation could quickly intensify with an expanding blue economy (Box 1) if it is not developed sustainably.

Meanwhile, the fisheries sector is increasingly competing for space and resources with other economic activities, such as offshore wind farms. And despite increased support, EU fisheries production is declining, having fallen by 18% between 2014 and 2021. The sector, including aquaculture, is unable to meet the demand of the average EU consumer, who consumes around 24kg of seafood per year. Consequently, the EU’s self-sufficiency in seafood production currently stands at only 38% (EUMOFA, 2023).

Driven largely by the growing demand for seafood products, persistent overfishing and unwanted bycatch lead to changes in fish communities and marine food webs. Overfishing, habitat degradation and bycatch, including that of sensitive species, are coupled with the effects of other pressures from human activities, such as eutrophication, pollution and climate change. The combined effects of these pressures may reduce the resilience of fish populations to adapt to environmental changes, potentially leading to stock depletion and even fisheries collapse. For example, this situation is currently the case for western herring stocks and eastern cod stocks in the Baltic Sea (ICES, 2023).

Addressing these challenges and transitioning to sustainable fisheries requires the full implementation and enforcement of existing management tools, especially those targeted at reducing the negative impacts of these pressures on marine resources. This is vital for improving the social, economic and environmental dimensions of fisheries.

Box 1. The EU’s blue economy

In May 2021, the European Commission adopted the communication on ‘A new approach for a Sustainable Blue Economy in the EU’ (EC, 2021). The approach integrates ‘blue growth’ into the European Green Deal and calls on all blue economy sectors to reduce their environmental and climate impact. The strategy underscores that tackling the climate and biodiversity crises requires healthy seas and a sustainable use of their resources to create alternatives to fossil fuels and traditional food production.

The term Blue Economy encompasses all sectoral and cross-sectoral economic activities based on or related to the oceans, seas and coasts, and includes:

  • Blue biotechnology
  • Desalination
  • Infrastructure and robotics
  • Marine living resources
  • Marine non-living resources
  • Marine renewable energy
  • Maritime defense
  • Marine and coastal tourism
  • Marine shipping and transport
  • Port activities
  • Research and innovation
  • Shipbuilding and repair

The ocean also has economic value that is not easy to quantify in terms of habitats for marine life, carbon sequestration, coastal protection, waste recycling and storing, and processes that influence climate and biodiversity.

Source: EU Blue Economy Sectors - European Commission (europa.eu)

Fisheries impact on marine resources

The common fisheries policy (CFP) aims to restore and maintain fish stocks above levels that can produce a maximum sustainable yield (MSY). But despite success in some EU waters in reducing overfishing of some stocks, harmful practices and unsustainable fishing levels persist. These issues contribute to the EU’s lack of success in meeting the CFP’s objective of exploiting all stocks below MSY.

In 2022, around 60% of the assessed stocks in Europe’s seas were found to be in good status or fished sustainably, although with significant regional differences, according to the EEA indicator on the status of fish and shellfish stocks. These findings largely align with recent assessments by the Regional Sea Conventions (RSCs), namely:

  • The target set by the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) of achieving 80% of stocks in good status was not met in the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR, 2023).
  • In the Baltic Sea, only 27% (4 out of 15) of commercial stocks were found to have good status on average (HELCOM, 2023).
  • In the Mediterranean and Black Sea, stocks contributing to only 50% of the landings are assessed. Of these, more than half are fished outside biologically sustainable limits and fishing pressure remains twice what is considered sustainable (FAO, 2023).

Excessive levels of fishing can lead to stocks being overfished in the long run. This results in significant environmental impact (Parker et al., 2018; Kristofersson et al., 2021) and economic losses, as more fishing effort (and associated costs) are needed to find and catch reduced fish populations (Grafton et al., 2007; Kelleher et al., 2009; World Bank, 2017).

But even at MSY levels, fisheries will impact the ecosystem and its food webs, contributing to biodiversity loss. Such impacts include:

  • Bycatch: The unintentional catch of juvenile and non-targeted species, including protected, endangered and/or threatened species (PETs) such as marine mammals, elasmobranchs (e.g. sharks and rays), turtles and seabirds, leads to declines in those populations. Often these species have unfavourable/bad conservation status, and the limited bycatch data available are generally of poor quality and inadequate for fully assessing the impacts (ICES, 2020; ICES, 2024). Globally, fisheries interact with at least 20 million individual PETs annually (FAO, 2019). While exact figures are unknown for Europe’s seas, estimates report over 38,000 individual PETs as bycatch from just 3.3% of the total fishing effort monitored in 2022 (ICES, 2024), implying that the number of PETs affected is substantially higher.
  • Discards: Throwing unwanted catch back into the sea, often dead or with a low chance of survival, amounts to an estimated 9 million tonnes annually, or roughly 10% of the global catch (FAO, 2019). If this is also the case for EU fisheries, then around 360,000 tonnes of seafood are discarded annually. To address this wasteful practice and encourage the use of more selective fishing gear, the EU introduced a landing obligation (LO) in 2015. Yet after its full implementation in 2019, there is still a general lack of compliance, and illegal and unreported discarding remains widespread (EC, 2021b; ECA, 2022).
  • Habitat degradation: Certain fishing methods, such as bottom trawling and dredging, can severely disrupt seabed ecosystems, destroying biogenic reefs and other habitats vital for diverse and flourishing marine life. In Europe, around 43% of shelf/slope areas and 79% of coastal seabeds are disturbed, primarily by bottom trawling (EC, 2020a).
  • Ghost fishing: Abandoned, lost or otherwise disposed of fishing gear (ALDFGs) pose a long-term threat to marine animals and contribute significantly to marine (plastic) litter (EEA, 2023a). Each year, 2,000 to 12,000 tonnes of ALDFGs enter Europe’s seas, killing marine life through entanglement or ingestion. Eventually, these materials degrade into microplastic fibres, are absorbed by zooplankton and re-enter the food web (Stolte et al., 2022), with potentially severe implications for seafood security, safety and public health.
  • Pollution: Vessels and fishing activity contribute to marine pollution through accidental oil and fuel spills, underwater noise, chemical and wastewater runoff, water column and seafloor litter. They also contribute to air pollution through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The EU fishing fleet contributes to climate change with around 4.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually (Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries, 2023; EC, 2024).
  • Loss of seafloor integrity: Fishing activities, in particular when using mobile bottom contacting gear, not only cause the loss of vital habitats for benthic communities but can also lead to the release into the water column of carbon trapped in marine sediments (blue carbon stocks), affecting ocean acidification. This carbon is then returned back into the atmosphere, further contributing to climate change and rising seawater temperatures, which consequently affects fish distribution and other ecosystem dynamics (EEA, 2023b; EEA, 2024).

Sustainability gap in Europe’s seas

The EU is committed to implementing an ecosystem-based approach to manage human activities (Box 2) in the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) (EU, 2008) and the CFP (EU, 2013). The former aims to achieve good environmental status (GES) in Europe’s seas by 2020, while the latter contributes to the same objective. Yet these objectives remain to be met as:

Box 2. Ecosystem-based approach to management

The ecosystem-based approach to the management of human activities is central to the MSFD and ensures that ‘the collective pressure of such activities is kept within levels compatible with the achievement of good environmental status and that the capacity of marine ecosystems to respond to human-induced changes is not compromised, while enabling the sustainable use of marine goods and services by present and future generations’ (EC, 2020a).

As an integrated approach to management, ecosystem-based management (EBM) considers the entire ecosystem, including humans as part of it. The goal is to maintain ecosystems in a healthy, clean, non‑toxic, productive and resilient condition, so that they can continue to provide humans with the services and benefits upon which we depend without being compromised.

It is a spatial approach that builds around: (1) acknowledging connections, (2) combined effects, and (3) multiple objectives — rather than a traditional approach that addresses single concerns, e.g. species, habitats, sectors, activities and individual national interests.

Source: EEA, 2020, adapted from McLeod and Leslie, 2009 and EEA, 2015.

While the MSFD seeks to keep the collective pressure on the marine environment at levels to ensure GES, it does not regulate any of the sectors exerting these pressures. It is up to EU Member States to find ways to comply with environmental legislation and sustainably manage pressures so that conservation objectives can be reached, while also preserving economic activities and benefits to coastal communities and society. Thus, achieving GES under the MSFD relies largely on key EU sectoral policies, such as the CFP for fisheries, to deliver on their objectives.

In this context, the EU Maritime Spatial Planning Directive (MSPD) (EU, 2014) requires Member States to develop their blue economy sectors while ensuring GES and so offers a robust framework for operationalising the ecosystem-based approach. However, confronted by the challenges of balancing blue growth and GES, the ecosystem-based approach to managing human activities remains largely overlooked in most national marine spatial plans (Jones et al., 2016; Greenhill, 2020; Haapasaari and van Tatenhove, 2022).

The success of the MSFD also depends on the effectiveness of other implementing laws. These include the Water Framework Directive (WFD) (EU, 2000), which covers transitional and coastal waters, the Birds Directive (EU, 2009) and the Habitats Directive (EU, 1992). Together, they aim to protect some of the most valuable and sensitive marine habitats and species, including through the EU-wide Natura 2000 network of protected areas. EU Member States are required to implement measures to deliver on the objectives of this legislation.

The CFP also contributes to these environmental objectives. However, the exclusive competence of the EU on the conservation of marine biological resources means that Member States may not unilaterally implement conservation measures, such as fisheries restrictions in MPAs, at least not beyond the limits of their territorial waters (see Box 3).

As a result, the uptake of marine environmental goals in EU fisheries management is challenging and remains limited (Wakefield, 2018; O’Hagan, 2020; Puharinen, 2023). This is evident in Natura 2000 sites, which currently cover around 9% of the EU’s sea area. While they constitute the majority of the EU’s MPAs, most of these sites are located in territorial waters and many still lack management plans (EEA, 2020b).

Box 3. Marine protected areas and fisheries under the CFPs

As underscored by the European Green Deal (EC, 2019), establishing a well-designed and effectively managed network of MPAs is key to rebuilding and restoring marine ecosystems and biodiversity, guaranteeing their long-term benefits. These benefits may include, for example: (1) the spillover of biomass from areas closed to fishing to those that remain open and (2) better carbon storage capacity of seabed habitats. Thus, MPAs have the potential to increase fishing opportunities while also enhancing resilience and adaptation capacity to climate change (e.g. ICES, 2021).

Currently, MPAs cover 12.1% of the EU’s sea area, of which less than 2% have management plans in place. Less than 1% are strictly protected (EEA, 2020; ECA, 2020; EC, 2020b). The situation is even more dire in the Mediterranean Sea, where less than 0.06% have full protection (Claudet et al., 2020). Furthermore, the few fully protected areas or ‘no-take zones’ are mostly located in EU Member States’ territorial waters that extend up to 12 nautical miles (nm) from the shore or, in the case of the EU’s outermost regions, up to 100nm.

In these areas, Member States may apply fisheries conservation measures to their fishing fleets and all other EU vessels, although some exceptions may apply. However, if a Member State wants to implement fisheries restrictive measures in areas beyond its territorial waters and up to the outward limit of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ), these must first be proposed through joint recommendation under the regionalisation process of the CFP (see articles 11 and 18). For this, all other Member States with a direct fishing management interest must agree to the measures and give up access to fishing rights in the areas concerned (Figure 1).

This procedure under the CFP aimed to support Member States in achieving their environmental obligations, such as those under the birds and the habitats directives and MSFD (GES, as required under Article 2 of the CFP), is generally considered inadequate to provide effective and timely protection (e.g. ECA, 2020; Kingma and Walker, 2021).

This is demonstrated by the fact that damaging fishing practices, such as bottom trawling, have been documented in 59% of EU Atlantic and Baltic Sea MPAs (Dureuil et al., 2018) and in 90% of offshore marine Natura 2000 sites (Marine Conservation Society, 2024). Moreover, trawling intensity is often higher within these MPAs than in non-protected areas (Perry et al., 2022). In the Mediterranean Sea, regulations are considered to be insufficiently stringent to confer any ecological benefit in over 95% of the areas designated for protected ion (Claudet et al., 2020).

Without significantly reducing or eliminating fishing pressure in MPAs, current management undermines the potential of MPAs to reverse the ongoing declines of marine biodiversity and habitats (ECA, 2020).

Figure 1. Restricting access to fishing in MPAs in EU waters under the CFP

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Confronting policy implementation gaps

The European Green Deal addresses the need to achieve, among other things, sustainability in EU fisheries, and secure a fair and just transition. The policy led to the introduction of an action plan to protect and restore marine ecosystems for sustainable and resilient fisheries (Marine Action Plan) (EC, 2023), which was published as part of a comprehensive Fisheries and Ocean package in 2023 and is relevant also for the Biodiversity Strategy for 2030.

The Marine Action Plan strives to strengthen the bridge between EU fisheries and environmental policy and aims to ensure a thriving sustainable fisheries sector that coexists with and benefits from healthy and biodiverse marine ecosystems. It reaffirms the EU's commitment to implement the CFP and marine environmental policy and urges EU Members States to intensify their efforts to fulfil existing obligations under EU law and policy.

To this end, the action plan highlights specific obligations that support both sustainable fisheries and environmental objectives. It also outlines actions toward more sustainable practices, including measures to reduce bycatch and the phasing out of mobile bottom contacting gear in all EU MPAs by 2030. Despite notable opposition to the latter, by July 2024, two Member States — first Greece in April, followed by Sweden in June —have since committed to banning bottom trawling in their MPAs. Sweden plans to go further and ban bottom trawling in all its territorial waters.

These initiatives mark a significant shift in fisheries policy and are important steps towards protecting and restoring marine ecosystems and biodiversity, as well as supporting low-impact fisheries. They are also key to meeting the EU Biodiversity Strategy (EC, 2020b) political commitment to protect a minimum of 30% of the EU’s waters, of which 10% should be under strict protection, by 2030. As less than 1% of EU seas are currently fully protected, achieving this target by 2030 will require significant action and cooperation at national, regional and international levels.

The action plan reiterates that conservation actions be implemented through national measures or, where appropriate, by joint recommendations under the CFP. However, as highlighted in Box 3, joint recommendations have had limited success so far in ensuring adequate and timely protection from fishing in most EU MPAs, especially beyond territorial waters (ECA, 2020).

MPAs are effective spatial, ecosystem-based management tools for fisheries, but they require appropriate levels of protection and management, unlike the current situation (Claudet et al., 2020, Drouineau et al., 2023). The newly adopted Nature Restoration Law (NRL) can, in due course, play a role in addressing some of these shortfalls. It aims to support these objectives by mandating restoration targets for specified habitats and species, including measures that should cover at least 20% of the EU’s land and sea areas by 2030.

Good for nature, good for business

As underlined by the action plan, only a healthy, productive and resilient marine environment can support a thriving and competitive fishing industry in the long-term. On that account, the European Commission has also committed to developing a tool to integrate ‘natural capital’ into economic decisions. The tool will quantify the value of marine ecosystem services and the socio-economic costs and benefits derived from maintaining a healthy marine environment. Incorporating this into policymaking could help in assessing the social, economic and environmental impacts of different conservation measures, and pave the way to more sustainable and equitable outcomes.

Implementing fisheries conservation measures, such as limiting fishing in MPAs or phasing out harmful practices, will inevitably entail short-term costs. Adequate management to cope with these costs will be needed to address possible resistance to regulations, which will hinder the shift towards more sustainable activities (Bastardie et al., 2024).

However, delivering on key initiatives, such as those outlined by the action plan, might more quickly lead to a resilient and prosperous seafood industry, capable of creating attractive jobs and competitive salaries (EC, 2021c). This is crucial for securing generational renewal in the sector and the future of EU fisheries. A healthy marine environment with productive fish stocks and rich biodiversity is essential for guaranteeing a prosperous future for our fisheries communities for generations to come.

1Identifiers2Notes3References

Briefing no. 10/2024
Title: Healthy seas, thriving fisheries: transitioning to an environmentally sustainable sector
EN HTML: TH-AM-24-014-EN-Q - ISBN: 978-92-9480-675-8 - ISSN: 2467-3196 - doi: 10.2800/85288

  1. These activities include the extraction and cultivation of living resources (e.g. fishing and agriculture), the extraction of non-living resources (e.g. minerals, oil and gas), marine energy production (e.g. offshore wind), maritime transport and coastal tourism.
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  2. Financial support to the fisheries sector increased from EUR 5.1 billion (in constant 2018 euros) under the European Fisheries Fund (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32006R1198) (EFF from 2007 to 2013) to EUR 8.9 billion (in constant 2018 euros) under the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF from 2014 to 2020), a 75% increase.
    ↵
  3. EU fishing fleet landings decreased from 4.4 million tonnes in weight in 2014 to 3.6 million tonnes in 2021 (STECF, 2023).
    ↵

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