European fishing, aquaculture, and seafood processing and trading organizations are calling on the European Commission to urgently correct the implementation of the E.U.’s Fisheries Control Regulation, warning that new rules implemented last month risk undermining safety at sea, legal certainty, and the competitiveness of European operators.
In a joint statement, Seafood Europe, the European Association of Fish Producer Organizations (EAPO), fishing body Europêche, and farming lobby group Copa-Cogeca say the phased rollout of the new control regime – including the digital CATCH system – is imposing disproportionate administrative and operational burdens that aren’t aligned with real-world fishing and trading practices. The concerns echo a recent joint position submitted by E.U. member states to the bloc’s Agriculture and Fisheries Council.
The industry groups argue that several requirements are “technically impossible to comply with,” particularly in the case of mixed fisheries and smaller vessels. These include the obligation to record catches from zero kilograms and the strict application of margins of tolerance, which they say are impossible to adhere to under normal fishing conditions. As a result, operators face heightened safety risks, unintentional infractions, and the prospect of heavy sanctions.
Catch composition varies haul by haul, and estimates made at sea are not laboratory measurements, Europêche Managing Director Daniel Voces de Onaíndi said.
“When very tight tolerance margins and zero-kilogram reporting treat normal variability as an offense, fishers feel they are being penalized for honest estimates,” he said.
Voces de Onaíndi gave the example that if a fisher declares a catch of 1 kilogram at sea and the landed weight is later recorded as either under that total at 700 grams or over that total at 1.3 kilograms, this is treated by the new law as “non-compliance,” despite the estimate being made in good faith and the actual landing weight recorded.
“That damages trust and risks turning control into an adversarial process rather than a cooperative one,” he told SeafoodSource. “That is why Europêche is urging the European Commission not to treat estimation deviations below 100 kilograms as non-compliance or infringements.”
Regarding increased safety risks, Voces de Onaíndi said that fisheries trade unions, such as the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF), have warned that increased administrative burdens subtract essential time from navigation and rest, directly increasing the risk of accidents.
The union cautioned these new demands risk conflicting with work-and-rest limits established under ILO Convention 188, E.U. legislation, and national occupational health and safety rules, he said.
Stakeholders have also raised the alarm over what they say are serious technical and operational shortcomings in the digital CATCH system, which requires that digital catch certificates be attached to all fishery products entering the E.U., explaining that these are already disrupting seafood supply chains and driving up costs.
They said unclear responsibilities for completing catch certificates and overlapping controls are increasing processing times and legal uncertainty – problems compounded by the fact the system is not yet fully operational in practice. Additionally, they maintain that the current approach places a disproportionate administrative burden on E.U. operators.
“Imports are clearly the significant and biggest bottleneck,” Seafood Europe President Guus Pastoor said. “Consignments cannot qualify for release for free circulation and further sales into the E.U. before the digital CATCH [documents] are submitted and approved, so consignments are piling up at the border or seized in operators’ cold stores.”
There are many cost implications to this, including demurrage charges, capital tied up in inventory, fees to agents’ extra work time and load, and potentially lost contracts due to delays. There are also destruction costs due to spoilage when it comes to fresh fish, Pastoor added.
The lack of countries outside of the bloc that are able to digitally supply catch certification information is another major concern as it means E.U. importers need to insert the information manually in the CATCH system, he said.
“The new situation causes a considerable amount of extra administrative work for importers; one container can have multiple catch certificates,” Pastoor said. “Mistakes are easily made when inserting the information. What if the information from third countries contains mistakes that the importer cannot know? Who then is responsible for the wrong data in the system?”
Therefore, stakeholders are requesting to relaunch CATCH at a later date, Voces de Onaíndi said.
“Our companies have been sharing widespread IT failures both for exports and imports, a lack of interoperability between member states, unclear legal interpretations, and insufficient system preparedness, as operators are required to build databases in the new digital system largely from scratch. This affects seafood market flows amounting to millions of tons per year, and these problems are already disrupting trade and blocking consignments,” he said. “This makes it necessary to delay the mandatory entry into force of the system and allow the temporary coexistence of the new and existing systems at least until January 2027 while working against the clock with E.U. and national authorities to solve all technical problems.”
Though many in the industry have pushed back against CATCH, other sector stakeholders have urged the E.U. to keep it in place. A group of conservation NGOs recently asked European Commissioner for Fisheries and Oceans Costas Kadis to maintain the digital controls.
“Commissioner, your leadership sends a clear signal. We encourage you to stay on this course. We stand ready to support the full and effective implementation of a control system that Europe’s fisheries, coastal communities, and citizens urgently need,” the joint letter said.
Kadis also called the launch of CATCH in early January “successful,” noting that 1,500 import declarations were validated in the first 10 days, helping reverse a trend that some have said left the bloc’s borders wide open to seafood caught via illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) means.
“Against this background, let me clarify an important point: Some of the issues raised and attributed to CATCH are in fact not a new obligation. They are the result of the uneven and ineffective application of the E.U. catch certification scheme in its paper format at national level,” Kadis said. “As I already mentioned during the Agrifish Council last June, it is the responsibility of each member state to ensure that their operators are prepared and ready on time to onboard and use CATCH.”
Nevertheless, Voces de Onaíndi said the new regulations as a whole risk discouraging professionals in the sector from remaining and new entrants from joining.
“The current implementation of the Fisheries Control Regulation is revealing significant operational issues, clearly showing the need for more time, flexibility, and legal clarification. Bottlenecks and disruptions along the supply chain are already a reality,” he said. “With further digital obligations approaching for small-scale fleets, alongside intrusive measures such as CCTV and engine power monitoring, a lack of flexibility will create additional disruption and, in the longer term, discourage people from remaining in the sector.”
