Seafood Europe has welcomed the European Commission’s publication of the Vision 2040 for fisheries and aquaculture and its objective of building a resilient, competitive and sustainable European aquatic-food system.
The Vision recognises the importance of global value chains, open trade, diversified supply and the contribution of aquatic foods to European food and nutritional security. It also acknowledges that more than 60% of EU aquatic-food consumption is imported and that access to key resources will remain a central challenge to 2040.
For the EU seafood processing and trading industry, this structural dependence on international supply has an important industrial consequence.
‘Ensuring that Europe remains a competitive place to process aquatic food is an essential condition for achieving the Union’s objectives on food security, strategic resilience and sustainable aquatic value chains,’ said Guus Pastoor, President of Seafood Europe.
The EU seafood processing industry represents approximately 102,000 direct full-time equivalent jobs, and €33.5 billion in turnover, while supporting significant additional economic activity and employment across logistics, cold storage, transport and related services.
He commented that raw material accounts for around 71% of its production costs. The sector is therefore particularly exposed to changes in international supply, energy costs, trade conditions and regulatory requirements.
Seafood Europe considers that the implementation of Vision 2040 should take these combined pressures into account, particularly in the current environment of geopolitical uncertainty, renewed inflationary pressure and elevated energy costs.
The association supports the Vision’s objectives on sustainability, traceability and supply-chain resilience. It nevertheless cautions that these objectives must be implemented together with competitiveness.
‘In the present economic and geopolitical environment, competitiveness cannot be treated as the residual outcome after sustainability, trade, control and external-policy objectives have been decided separately. It must be a design condition applied across them,’ said Seafood Europe’s Secretary General Katarina Sipic.
Seafood Europe has therefore asked Commissioner Costas Kadis to give the processing and trading industry a clearer place in the implementation of Vision 2040.
The association proposes a dedicated cross-Commission workstream on seafood processing competitiveness and raw-material security, as well as a cumulative competitiveness assessment for measures affecting the aquatic- food value chain. Such an assessment should consider whether the overall policy framework strengthens or weakens the economic case for processing and adding value within the European Union.
‘The core objective should remain to reinforce the European industrial capacity without lowering environmental, social and food-safety standards. In addition, the Vision2040 should consider where the value associated with supplying the European market will be created, instead of simply looking into how seafood in Europe should be produced and sourced,’ Guus Pastoor stated.
