Summary report from the workshop on "Improving management under fisheries agreements"

The relevance of the External Dimension aspects of the EU Common fisheries Policy (CFP) is permanently called into question, casting doubts on whether they are properly integrated within the CFP, evaluating their coherence with other EU policies and estimating their conformity and consistency with the international law of the sea. The relevant branches of this CFP are the so-called ‘Sustainable Fisheries Partnerships Agreements (SFPAs) which do represent one of the most pertinent manifestations of the EU’s international dimension. The EU has an enhanced responsibility to promote sustainable and responsible fisheries management in international waters, assuming responsibilities as a contracting party to SFPAs. Those responsibilities range from the reinforcement of governance, to the creation of assessments to strengthen the weaknesses of these agreements by establishing inclusive policies with a real impact on society. The FarFish project facilitated a web conference/workshop in June 2021 in order to facilitate multi-stakeholder discussions on the advantages, disadvantages and current challenges on the External Dimension of the CFP. The focus of the discussions was on the SFPAs as an instrument to strengthen the collaboration among EU and Coastal States. Organised by Centro Tecnólogico del Mar- Fundación CETMAR and the Long Distance Advisory Council (LDAC) the event did offer a mix of panel discussions and different interventions to explore how the CFP External Dimension can be a driver for beneficial change in the field of sustainable fisheries and governance in international waters, in order to improve the implementation of the External Dimension of the CFP in the next period (2023-2033). This report contains a summary of the discussions at the workshop and main conclusions. From a general view, the conclusions describe a relatively optimistic balance for SFPAs as contributors to sustainable fisheries. Nevertheless, there is still room to improve, especially in order to respond to the needs and interests of coastal states and local communities. Many of the conclusions formulated during the workshop have assisted the FarFish consortium to feed into a position paper that was submitted to the EC public consultation procedure aimed to inform the revision process of the CFP towards 2022. In addition, some of these recommendations described in the report, are feeding the creation of a policy brief that will be presented at the final FarFish meeting in mid-November 2021, as a new opportunity to generate a strategic document that efficiently encompasses concrete responses and actions towards the CPF review