The Clash of Fisheries : How can the European Union Improve Conservation and Management of Fish Stocks in Union Waters to Ensure Biological Diversity of its Seas?

Abstract

Overfishing continues to occur throughout the European Union (EU) waters. The protection of fisheries was first established in 1983 with the creation of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Since then, the protection for fish stocks in EU waters has increased and today the legal regime for fisheries protection can be found in other areas of law, for instance in environmental law. The conservation of fish stocks is an exclusive EU competence. The purpose of the CFP is for the Member States to combine their fishing resources and share them collectively. The EU Member States can (with a few exceptions) fish in each other’s waters. However, the EU delegates competence to the Member States to fulfill their obligations arising from other areas of EU law. Moreover, the conservation of fish stocks is also found in international law treaties to which the EU is a party (e.g., the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)). This thesis focuses on the clash between the different legal regimes that seek to conserve fish stocks in the EU to find out how these different laws relate to each other. Recent international law decisions (e.g., the COP15 decision and the adoption of the BBNJ Agreement) create an obligation for States and international organizations to protect at least 30 percent of the waters under their jurisdiction. In this thesis, international law is assessed separately from EU law. At the end will competing interests and rules be weighed against each other to see how fish stocks should be protected in the EU. The analysis shows that many of the provisions found in, for instance, UNCLOS, are also found in the CFP. However, protecting 30 percent or more of the marine environment will require clearer division of competence and more guidance on how to implement the acts of legislation from the EU.