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The EU's IUU regulation - need for improved transparency

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The EU IUU regulation is currently being reviewed. This review needs to highlight an important weakness: the serious lack of transparency about how the regulation is being implemented, which is leading to criticisms of inconsistency and arbitrary decision making.

This problem with the IUU regulation has surfaced recently following the decision to warn South Korea that it might be blacklisted by the EU. The EC also warned Ghana, and Curacao at the same time, as it has done previously against Guinea, Cambodia, Fuji and Belize.

The EC undertakes such steps against countries that fail to discharge their duties as flag, port, coastal or market State. EC position and supporting evidence are notified to that country’s authorities. If no corrective measures are taken, then country may be blacklisted, meaning fish trade with the EU and joint fishing operations are prohibited. Furthermore, any existing FPA with the black listed country will be denounced, and negotiations to establish a new FPA will not take place.

The Korean government protested this announcement, stressing that the Korean law on long-distance fishing was being reviewed to address EU concerns: all Korean distant-water fishing vessels will be equipped with vessel monitoring systems (VMS), by end of January 2014, the maximum fine for IUU fishing will be up to three times the value of the IUU catches made. This is all positive news. .A few months ago, reports from Guinea, where more than 80 Korean vessels are fishing, suggested only a couple of these vessels were emitting VMS signals, and some were located fishing in the zone reserved for artisanal fishing. What is more, last October, the Environmental Justice Foundation documented the case of the Korean vessel Kum Woong 101, which had been reported fishing in the zone reserved for artisanal fishing in Sierra Leone but only had to pay a token fine of a few thousand dollars.

However, the decision to warn these third countries about potential blacklisting is open to the criticism that the EC is not applying the regulation fairly, as very few details are known about the criteria for pre-notification and potential blacklisting, and how these are applied by the EC.  

Already, the Korea Overseas Fisheries Association (KOFA), a group of operators of fishing vessels in international waters, used that argument when it claimed, in December, that the EU was applying ‘a double standard when blacklisting countries’. Indeed, what has been declared by Korea in the press about the measures adopted – review of the legislation, increase of the fines – are similar to those taken by other pre-notified third countries, like Fiji, which were deemed enough to convince the EC that Fiji was able to fight IUU fishing.

In another area – the implementation of the sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regulation – reports and recommendations from EU veterinary inspections, as well as replies made by the third country authorities, are made accessible to the public on a regular basis.

Taking the same approach for the implementation of the EU IUU regulation would help clarify with EU third countries’ partners that this regulation is applied fairly to all.

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