The European Commission has published an independent study outlining the performance of its flagship landing obligation policy. Five years on from its full implementation, the study concludes that the landing obligation – highly controversial at the time and bitterly opposed by the industry – is some way from reaching achieving its goals.
The landing obligation was introduced in 2015 and came fully into force in January 2019. Its goal is to eliminate wasteful discards by encouraging more selective fishing and the avoidance of unwanted catches.
While the fisheries sector, national authorities and scientific institutions have made significant efforts to innovate in fishing gear, technologies and practices to reduce unwanted catches, the study shows that there are some challenges in the effectiveness of the landing obligation objective of gradually eliminating discards.
The study highlights a number of potential limiting factors on the implementation of the landing obligation, including insufficient incentives for fishers to comply, ineffective monitoring and enforcement tools, conflicts with maintaining the economic viability of fisheries due to the loss of commercially valuable catches when increasing selectivity, and challenges in improving species and gear selectivity.
It sets out that the large number of available exemptions to the landing obligation made it difficult to directly trace impacts within particular fleets, fisheries and sea areas.
This independent study was conducted by external experts, and it was based on desk research, case studies, surveys and interviews. The study was launched in 2024, and its results will feed into the ongoing evaluation of the common fisheries policy regulation.
The European Commission is organising an online event to present the study and states that the results of the study will be discussed with stakeholders, feeding into the evaluation of the common fisheries policy regulation.
