A fisheries management system in crisis - the EU Common Fisheries Policy

No abstracts are to be cited without prior reference to the author.

The crisis in EU fisheries management has prevailed almost since the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) was first implemented in 1983. Despite tremendous effort and resources having been invested in improving the performance of the CFP the crisis worsens year by year. The Commission has clearly expressed the short-comings of the CFP both in connection with its revision in 1992 (CEC 1991) and its reform in 2002 (CEC 2001) and will repeat them again in the up-coming issue paper reviewing the CFP (CEC 2009). This paper will synthesis the complex social, economic and political system influenced by – or perhaps defined by - the CFP, the interaction of many explanatory factors. Different theoretical and analytical perspectives will be applied to highlight the various factors and processes that influence the CFP. The aim is to uncover the main factors influencing the CFP and to provide some direction on how to improve the CFP for the future. The paper concludes by proposing that the CFP is revised to enhance regionalisation and devolution of management responsibilities to the fishing industry in conjunction with a results-based management approach. Particular the institutional structure of the CFP should be transform into a suite of de facto eco-region fisheries policies to overcome the present problems of having a common policy that attempts to manage almost all aspects of a very fragmented sector across very different eco-systems that in reality have very few commonalities