Although 50% of Atlantic and 80% of Mediterranean marine resources are estimated to be overfished in European waters [1]–[3], Europe’s seafood demand continues to rise. Around 23 kg of seafood are currently consumed every year by each European Union (EU) citizen, with an increase of 2% per year [4]–[5]. The question of how to satisfy this rising demand, while decreasing its domestic fishing effort to avoid the collapse of its own fisheries and limiting its dependence on imports, has been on the EU’s agenda since the 1950s. The answer was the expansion of the EU fishing fleet further offshore and southward, often into the waters of developing countries [6]–[8]. Currently, a significant part of the EU catch is realized by a subset of the EU fleet comprised of 700 vessels, of which more than half fish under access agreements in the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of other countries and the rest within the High Seas [9]–[11].

In 1982, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) was adopted, and its Article 62 forced distant-water fishing countries interested in fishing more (such as member countries of the EU) to sign fishing access agreements with host countries having a ‘surplus’ of resource, if they wished to fish within their 200 nm EEZs [12]. This Article is, however, based on two ambiguous notions, i.e., (i) that the ‘maximum sustainable yield’ can be estimated for most stocks in question, which is often impossible in developing countries [13]–[15]; and (ii) that the ‘total catch’ of these countries is known, which has been demonstrated not to be the case in all countries so far examined [16]–[22]. Joint scientific committees and regional fisheries management organizations are currently responsible for assessing the health of exploited stocks and setting fishing limits for both coastal and pelagic species targeted under European public fishing access agreements. However, concerns have been raised about the efficiency of such committees and organizations, mainly due to their lack of accessible data and analytical capacity [13], [23]–[24]. Consequently, to date, the vast majority of EU public fishing access agreements (and probably most agreements with other distant-water fishing countries) do not mention any quotas, and at best, refer to a ‘limit of reference’ (which can be exceeded for an additional payment, without any links to management targets, such as MSY, or stock status). This creates a loophole that both distant-water fishing countries and host countries use to maximize either their catch or their rent, sometimes at the expense of the resource’s health [25]–[27]. Indeed, any surpluses for fleets fishing in developing countries are likely to be lower than assumed. This is the case for the agreement with Mauritania, for example, which includes fishing possibilities for sardinella (Sardinella aurita) and cephalopds (mainly Octopus vulgaris), two overexploited stocks which together represent more than 50% of the landings of local artisanal fisheries but for which surpluses no longer exist [28]–[30].

Given UNCLOS, the EU created a strategic network of publicly funded fishing access agreements to govern access to valuable resources and support other private agreements made by its fishing industry with neighboring developing countries (Figure 1). Since the first public agreements between the EU and Guinea-Bissau and Senegal in 1980, which anticipated the adoption of UNCLOS, 18 other agreements have been signed throughout Africa and Oceania. These publicly funded fishing access agreements are designed to target either tuna and associated species, or coastal and demersal species (e.g., crustaceans, cephalopods, small pelagic fish, demersal fish). Most current agreements in West Africa (Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, and São Tomé and Principe), in East Africa (except Mozambique until 2006), and Oceania strictly focus on tuna species (hereinafter termed ‘tuna agreements’). On the other hand, early agreements with West African countries covered mostly coastal and demersal species, typically with a small tuna component (hereinafter ‘mixed agreements’).

The distinction between tuna and mixed agreements is important because tuna agreements focus on pelagic species that seem to be less impacted by industrial fishing than demersal species [5]. Also, pelagic species are generally not heavily exploited by local fishers [6], [31], in contrast to the demersal species targeted by mixed agreements [28], [32]. Official EU documents (e.g., proposals [33] and working documents [34]) reveal it is likely that the EU will expand its network of tuna agreements (by signing new ones such as with the Cook Islands [35] or resuming previously cancelled ones, such as Gabon [36]), while continuing to phase out most of the demersal component of mixed agreements. The EU would, however, still allow the beneficiaries of current demersal licenses to create joint venture operations or reflag their fishing vessels [10], [37] outside the EU, effectively reducing the official capacity of the European fleet. Although beneficial as a means to add local value (e.g., job creation), this policy is deeply criticized as simply ‘exporting’ excess fishing effort to developing countries. Therefore, this is unlikely to end in a reduction of overfishing in many developing countries’ waters (especially for demersal resources [25], [27], [38]).

Many studies have focused on fishing agreements worldwide, and most have suggested that the fees received by host countries are low compared to the value of what is extracted, irrespective of the origin of the distant-water fishing country [6], [31], [39]–[48]. Recently, however, the situation seems to have improved in the Pacific [49]. Most of these studies are country- or region-specific, and usually cover a short period of time. For the European public fishing access agreements, these studies have had limited policy implications, although they are important at a local level, since they provided neither long-term trends nor a global analysis of these trends. Additionally, the breakdown of total fees paid by both the EU (i.e., subsidies) and the fishing industry has never been analyzed at a global scale. Here we provide a comprehensive analysis of the 33-year period covered by these publicly funded EU agreements (1980–2012). Focusing on the expanding tuna agreements, we analyze trends in each fee component (distant-water fishing country vs. host country, and then EU taxpayers vs. EU industry) to examine shortcomings related to these agreements and highlight historical trends, in order to provide ground for a sound reform of the European public fishing access agreements.

For all twenty host countries that have been involved at some point in a public fishing access agreement with the EU, we retrieved all related official texts (namely, ‘council regulations/decisions’, ‘agreements’, ‘protocols’, and ‘information on the date of entry into force’) from the EU law database (http://eur-lex.europa.eu; also available in print). From these documents, we extracted the following data and information: (i) EEZ access fees and development aid (paid by EU taxpayers); (ii) fishing fees (paid by EU industry, either per tonne of fish or per unit of vessel capacity); (iii) fleet capacity; and (iv) specific ‘quotas’ and ‘limits of reference’ (both referred to as ‘quotas’ throughout this paper, although ‘limits of reference’ can be exceeded in exchange for additional payment), if available. This was done for each gear type or target species, country, and year (see Table S1 and References S1 for each country’s references).

This information was mostly collected from the ‘protocols’, although some of this information was only found in the ‘agreements’ for the earlier time-period. ‘Council regulations/decisions’ were mostly used to determine whether a renewed agreement was similar to its previous iteration, and ‘information on the date of entry into force’ documents were used to determine whether an agreement was active or not during any given year.

To produce a harmonized database, we then standardized the following units:

Overall, the subsidies spent by taxpayers to grant the EU fishing industry the access to waters of host countries represent approximately 75% of the total value of the agreements for which such a ratio could be estimated (i.e., only agreements with quotas for their tuna component; Figure 4B). It can be argued, thus, that these subsidies allowed the maintenance of high fishing capacity by the EU in foreign waters. The high fishing effort that these subsidies generate is likely to have had detrimental effects on both the fish resources and fisheries development of host countries [25]–[27], [66]–[67]. Also, this high level of subsidization essentially means that the European consumer pays for the fish twice: once when it is caught, and again when it is bought. It could be argued that these agreements provide European consumers with cheaper fish. However, this is likely not the case, since European markets are supplied not only by the fleet fishing under such agreements [38], and prices of seafood are, to a large extent, globally harmonized in this market.

Our estimates of the fees paid by the industry relative to the fees paid by the European taxpayers (i.e., ∼25%) and the value of the industry fees relative to gross revenue (i.e., ∼1.5%) should be considered as conservative. First, the industry commonly does not use all annual fishing rights agreed upon in the agreements [68], while the EU usually still pays 100% of the EEZ access fees and development aid [69]–[70]. Therefore, it can be assumed that the industry commonly pays less than 25% of the total cost of these agreements. Second, there is increasingly widespread commercial use of bycatch and non-targeted species, such as sharks [23], [31] (exclusively targeted for their fins), which are not included in the industry’s fee. Therefore, the industry likely pays less than 1.5% of the overall landed value. The industry may argue here that they often pay licenses for fishing rights they do not use, but we believe that the overall impact on the global fee is low. Furthermore, as noted above, there is also often an un-reported or mis-reported component that understates the benefit of the industry (e.g., in the mid-2000s for the agreement with the Seychelles [71]). Furthermore, current partnership agreements only refer to the major targeted species. Thus, these committees and organizations do not focus on associated species or catches that are either discarded, or increasingly targeted when valuable. In some cases, bycatch species may even constitute an important or major part of total landings, often including overexploited or threatened resources. This is the case for many Mauritanian demersal fish stocks exploited as bycatch by Spanish shrimp trawlers, but not considered in the agreements and not accounted for in the financial compensation [28]–[29], [61], [72]. Based on recently collected evidence (e.g., records of Mozambican catches landed in South Africa [http://transparentsea.co/images/8/8a/Durban_landings.pdf] and European Commission data for Madagascar and Mozambique [http://transparentsea.co/images/d/dc/DG-MARE_sharks_lettre.pdf]), it appears that such free ‘side activities’ have become very important for some operators in the Indian Ocean, where Spanish longliners mostly target sharks [31], [73]–[74]. This targeted bycatch therefore represents an important part of the industry’s gross revenue and must be accounted for during the negotiation of financial compensation.

Although there are operating costs that the industry must cover (e.g., wages, fuel, taxes), it is expected that the net benefit accrued to the industry represents a sizeable part of the gross revenue, hence there is some room to raise the industry fishing fees. To assess what would be a ‘fair’ fee is a political decision requiring better understanding of the profits made by fishing firms operating under these access agreements. However, because account books are kept private, it is currently extremely difficult to estimate the industry’s net benefits, thus indirect methods via (global) fishing cost [75] and ex-vessel price databases [58]–[59] would be required. Interestingly, a senior representative of the French tuna fleet recently publicly acknowledged that the fee paid by the industry is low and that it would be reasonable to set it at up to 7% of the landed value [76]–[77]. This is a goal that host countries may consider right away. In approaching this issue, host countries in West Africa and the Indian Ocean could learn from the South Pacific Tuna Treaty, in which host countries are organized into a cartel-like organization [39], giving them more leverage to negotiate higher fishing fees. It is worth noting that Indian Ocean countries engaged in the current discussion about future regional allocation of quotas are heading towards adopting such a system. Removing subsidies and increasing benefit-sharing may also help ensure that the fishing fleet stays at a more sustainable size.

Overall, while one can argue that the amount host countries receive is not always negligible, EU agreements have clearly benefited the fishing industry more than the host countries. This discrepancy raises concerns of equitability and contradicts stated EU development goals, which suggests benefits from these agreements should be shared between both parties, not mainly directed towards private EU interests [34]. The current situation is a result of the ‘value for money’ requirement by the Court of Auditors [70], and therefore EU fishing agreements are business agreements above anything else. Harmonizing regulations among the various Directorate Generals would allow the creation of strengthened partnership [38], which could in turn help to ensure that host countries are less inclined to replace EU agreements with more opaque private business agreements or joint ventures, or agreements with countries that are less transparent or accountable in their agreements and negotiations (such as China [44]). Examples of this behaviour can be found, for example, in Mauritania [78]–[79] and Senegal [80]. Note that joint ventures can be perceived by host countries as more beneficial than foreign fishing access agreements, because they generate more local value, for example, through the construction of local processing plants and the creation of associated jobs [47]. It could be argued whether or not it would be in the interest of the EU to directly subsidize the development of a domestic fleet or joint ventures, which will in turn negatively impact the fishing opportunities offered to the EU distant fleet.

Over the past few years, the EU has reiterated its wish to fish more sustainably and equitably [34], but also to expand its network of tuna agreements with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. Sizeable improvements have already been achieved since the first agreements, for example, through clauses related to monitoring, local processing, and employment of local crew. Most of these improvements occurred with the shift from ‘fishing agreements’ to ‘fisheries partnership agreements’ in 2004 [38], [81]. However, much remains to be done with the creation of ‘sustainable fisheries agreements’ in the context of the 2012–2014 reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. If the EU intends to honor its stated goals, it needs to ensure that its fishing agreements (and subsequent EU fleet behaviour) are equitable, fair, enforced, and do not jeopardize the health of fish resources, or artificially channel benefits towards EU industrial beneficiaries.

During the remaining months of 2013 and in early 2014, the EU will determine its fishing policy for the forthcoming decade through the reform of its Common Fisheries Policy, and we hope that it will act in accordance with its stated public goals. The EU has the potential to become a global leader in equitable and sustainable fishing, especially given its existing attempts to move in this direction through the elimination of mixed agreements and the addition of various beneficial clauses in its remaining agreements. However, there are numerous advances that would need to be made to ensure a more balanced and equitable arrangement between the EU and the host countries. We hope that this study helps to clarify the rationale for taking such steps.