The European Commission has launched a website providing data on EU Fishing Authorisations, enabling users to search fishing authorisations granted over the last ten years for EU vessels fishing outside EU waters and for non-EU vessels fishing in EU waters.
This is intended to boost transparency in EU fisheries and digitalisation of EU administration by making relevant fisheries data available in real-time to the public. The shared information is intended to ensure that the operations of EU external fishing fleets are open and accessible to everyone.
Additionally, the ‘Agreements’ section provides information on multilateral and bilateral fishing agreements and the legal frameworks in which the EU external fishing fleets are operating.
Some historic authorisations, notably for the period before 2023, were not migrated to the website for data quality reasons.
Authorisations of the EU vessels in GFCM and ICCAT are currently missing from the website, but these can be consulted in a regularlay updated and downloadable file.
This website is seen as an important step in implementing the EU Regulation on Sustainable Management of External Fishing Fleet (SMEFF regulation, EU 2017/2403), particularly on publicly accessible data.
