The European Commission has published a report detailing the potential feasibility of an ecolabeling scheme geared toward fishery and aquaculture products in the European Union.
The report, published 18 May, provides a three-pronged approach to action for the EU to decide upon: reinforcing the use of existing tools; minimum requirements set by the EU; or establishing an EU-wide ecolabel scheme. For each approach, the document outlines feasibility and its advantages and disadvantages.
Set to be debated by the European Parliament and the Council, the report “finds no evidence of explicit market failures or regulatory gaps when it comes to eco-labelling of fisheries and aquaculture products,” explained the European Commission in a prepared statement.
In addition, ecolabels for fishery and aquaculture products have not been found to be fundamentally different from those in other sectors such as wood or palm oil, where eco-labels remain private market-based instruments, according to the report.
Ecolabels are widely considered to improve fisheries management for both aquaculture and wild operations. They exist as “a mechanism to develop new markets or increase market access and target consumers selecting products based on environmental criteria,” the commission said in its introduction of the report.
