[Publication] Allocation of fishing opportunities in the EU

Background and aims of the research

The allocation of fishing opportunities – quotas, fishing effort and other rights of access – is among the most consequential decisions in EU fisheries management, directly determining who gets to fish and how much. The Council of the European Union sets total catch limits at the EU level, but Member States retain exclusive competence over how those opportunities are distributed among their fishing fleet.

Since 2014, Article 17 of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) Regulation has mandated that Member States use transparent and objective criteria of an environmental, social, and economic nature, explicitly encouraging incentives for vessels deploying selective gear or lower-impact techniques. More than a decade later, the extent to which national allocation practices have evolved to meet the provision’s true policy intent remains a subject of debate among stakeholders, the European Parliament and the Commission. In response, the present study aims to:

• Outline the current state of knowledge on the allocation of fishing opportunities in the EU and provide an overview of the current situation;
• Examine how Member States allocate fishing opportunities to their fishers and analyse the disparities this produces, in particular between small-scale and large-scale vessels;
• Compare national allocation systems with the provisions of Article 17 and assess how far Member States have adapted their systems following its introduction;
• Investigate the main consequences of the current allocation systems.

Major results

Integrating data from the European Commission, systematic legislative reviews, academic literature and direct consultations with 11 national fisheries administrations, the study highlights several key dynamics:

• Structural diversity and systemic nuance: EU allocation systems are far more diverse and complex than commonly understood, featuring 237 examples of criteria use (reducing to 141 distinct Member State-criterion combinations when excluding cases where a Member State uses the same criteria in multiple schemes). These criteria are frequently layered, tailored to specific fleet segments and species, and paired with active mechanisms – like quota reserves, ‘use-it or lose-it’ provisions, and points-based scoring – that shape distribution outcomes as much as the baseline criteria themselves.
• The entrenchment of historical track records as the main allocation criterion: Historical catch records remain the de facto default across the EU, utilised by 21 of 22 coastal Member States and commanding roughly two thirds of the total criteria weighting (self-reported by Member States). While valued by administrations for sector stability, predictability and legal defensibility, it locks in legacy fleet structures and constrains structural policy change.
• Marginalisation of environmental and social criteria: While 11 Member States implement environmental criteria and 19 use social or economic criteria, these measures are lightly weighted and structurally marginal. Environmental assessments are almost universally restricted to binary gear definitions (e.g. passive vs active gear), rather than incentivising demonstrated performance across a dynamic gradient.
• Systemic policy inertia: National allocation systems have changed remarkably little over the last 12 years. The European Commission has never formally found a Member State’s framework non-compliant – a leniency routinely reinforced by national courts and the Court of Justice of the EU. As noted in Commission Communication C/2025/6227 (vade mecum), this widespread inertia leaves current allocation methods ill-equipped to address modern ecological and economic challenges.
• The process vs outcome transparency gap: While 17 Member States self-report high levels of process transparency, independent verification reveals that public disclosure of actual allocation outcomes remains rare. Only two Member States maintain a comprehensive quota register linking specific opportunities to individual licences, and structural layers – such as internal reallocations within producer organisations – frequently obscure final distributions.

Policy recommendations

Recognising that the distribution of fishing opportunities is a sovereign Member State competence, policy recommendations seek to treat national legislative diversity as a collaborative resource to make future reforms easier, better-informed and more visible:

• Facilitate structured peer learning: Establish dedicated workshops, comparative case studies, and a public catalogue of allocation mechanisms based on the harmonised classification framework developed in this study.
• Encourage innovation in allocation design: Provide technical and administrative space for willing Member States to pilot dynamic, non-binary environmental criteria that track actual environmental pressure or impact across a continuous scale.
• Refine future questionnaires: Amend future Commission questionnaires to draw a strict analytical distinction between a Member State’s high-level targeted policy outcomes and the specific, operationalised criteria used to pursue them, as well as a distinction between criteria that divide fishing opportunities between fleet segments from those that allocate them within a segment. Questionnaires should also look beyond individualised catch quotas, expanding focus to pooled management systems, licences, and effort-based frameworks which dominate regions like the Mediterranean. Designed in this way, and building on the standardised library of criteria assembled in this study, the questionnaire is the most direct route to improving the transparency of the allocation process.
• Promote outcome transparency: Encourage national administrations to publish, at a minimum, a high-level annual summary or comprehensive public register detailing the precise distribution of fishing opportunities across individual vessels and licences. This is best advanced by promoting the example of the few Member States that already publish such information, rather than by imposing new requirements.

Clarify the Commission’s assessment framework: Publish a structured, clear methodology detailing how the Commission evaluates national alignment with Articles 16 and 17 of the CFP, offering Member States an explicit administrative reference point.