The European Ocean Pact is a political initiative announced by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, providing a crucial opportunity to combat pollution, reverse biodiversity loss, tackle climate change, and enhance the resilience of both the ocean and coastal communities.
The European Anglers Alliance (EAA) urge the Commission to acknowledge the huge potential of our sector to the EU’s Blue economy in this Oceans Pact.
The need for an European Oceans Pact - brief background
The European Commission plans to formally present this pact at the third UN Ocean Conference in Nice in June 2025, positioning the EU as a global leader in marine protection.
The pact aims in particular to – writes the Commission:
- Maintain a healthy, resilient and productive ocean
- Promote a sustainable and competititve blue economy, including fisheries and aquaculture
- Work towards a comprehensive agenda for marine knowledge, research and innovation, and investment
In an exchange of views with the European Parliament's Committee on Fisheries (PECH) on 19 February 2025, the Commissioner for Fisheries and Oceans, Costas Kadis, highlighted the adoption of the Oceans Pact as one of his important priorities for 2025 and a 'key deliverable' of his mandate.
5 strategic pillars acting as backbone of the European Oceans Pact
The objective of this Pact is both straightforward and ambitious: it aims to promote a comprehensive, unified, and holistic approach to ocean governance that encompasses all sectors. To do this, the European Commission underlined that this Oceans Pact would be constructed upon five “strategic pillars”:
- Ensuring a healthy and productive oceans through biodiversity protection
- Boosting the EU’s sustainable blue economy
- Expanding the EU’s marine knowledge framework
- Reinforcing international ocean governance
- Developing resilience and opportunities for coastal communities and cities
The final aim of the Pact is to achieve greater coherence between the different pieces of legislation, policies, strategies and programmes in terms of policy design. It will serve as a unified reference framework for all EU policies regarding oceans matters. The pact will also further improve knowledge of the oceans, encourage research and foster innovative solutions in marine policy and the blue economy.
The European Oceans Pact must recognize the importance of recreational fisheries sector
The event served as a timely reminder that recreational fisheries is a low-impact & high-added value sector must be appropriately considered in the decision-making process.
Input for the initiative has been gathered through consultations and high-level discussions, including during the 2025 European Ocean Days and the call for evidence which has recently been finalised. This call allowed stakeholders such as the European Anglers Alliance to further shape the Oceans Pact and share the perspectives & concerns of the angling community.
In its response to the European Commission’s call for evidence on the Pact, EAA underlines that the recreational fisheries sector is already “green and part of the blue economy [as] the total economic impact of the spending by Europe’s…marine recreational fishers amounts to 10.5 billion euro, supporting almost 100.000 jobs”.
However, as EAA writes, “this huge economic impact and its growth potential are, unfortunately, often overlooked by policymakers [and the EAA] would like the Ocean Pact to rectify that”.
To conclude, the EAA reiterates that the recreational sector and its value chain already represent a large proportion of the employment along rural and coastal regions of Europe. It is time to take the brakes off the MRF sector and to serve coastal economies with sustainable, well-paid jobs. It is time to offer a level playing field to the millions of Europeans who want to enjoy the public resource that are our fish. It is time to really acknowledge MRF as a part of the fisheries sector and to fully consider it as an integral part of coastal fisheries management such as the European Oceans Pact.
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