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European Fisheries Statistics

Summary
Evaluation
Commission Proposal
Legal Act
Implementation

Overall state of play:

Evaluation: finalised, SWD(2019)425, 28/11/2019
Commission Proposal – Ongoing

State of play, main conclusions, outlook

Eurostat's Annual Work Programme 2018 included as an objective 'Streamlining and simplification of European fishery statistics', which contributed to one of the main priority areas of the Juncker Commission: 'A Deeper and Fairer Internal Market with a Strengthened Industrial Base'. Accordingly, Eurostat started a project for streamlining and simplifying European Fishery Statistics (EFS). Its main aim is to ensure that in the future EFS are fit for purpose and that they bring significant added value for users of the statistical data with an acceptable burden on data producers. The Commission Proposal is expected to be adopted by the Commission in 2023, however delays are possible due the dependency of the EFS on on-going revisions of other legal acts related to the Common Fishery policy.

Estimated savings and benefits

The collection of fishery statistics is not financed directly by the Commission. Most source data are also collected for other purposes, so the total direct annual cost incurred by collecting and treating EFS in Member States and the Commission is approximately €5.6 million. The main direct costs of modernisation for stakeholders relate to adapting the statistical and technical systems in the European statistical system. These adaptation costs are expected to be marginal. In the mid to long term, the new legal basis for EFS is expected to lead to a slightly lower burden and to cost savings in the region of 1.2 million € annually due to a more efficient data use and simplified data flows.

Fit for Future Platform

Fit for Future Platform’s suggestions on EFS, as adopted in the opinion of 10 December 2021, have been integrated as potential goals into the development of the Commission proposal on EFS.

In its opinion, the Fit for Future recommended the following:

Suggestion 1: Greater uniformity in the collection and digitalisation of data

Suggestion 2: Efficient labelling, authorisation and reporting obligations

Suggestion 3: Simplification and streamlining of EU legislation on fisheries statistics

The Commission aims in its on-going revision to reduce double reporting, streamlining different databases and alleviating discrepancies. . Without prejudice to the ongoing revision and impact assessment outcome, the Commission aims to achieve this by reusing administrative data and harmonising requirements with other organisations, which has the potential to also improve the data quality.

Regarding the issue of improving the representativeness of aquaculture data collection and by this reducing the “no response error”, flagged by the Platform, the Commission underlines that aquaculture statistics are collected as a census, which is in line with the aim of suggestion 2. In this context, the “No response error” should not be a large issue.

Simplification and streamlining of EU legislation on fisheries statistics is an overarching aspect and it feeds into the general goal of the ongoing revision to streamline the EFS, including by:

• clarifying, harmonising and streamlining definitions, classifications, concepts and timings between statistics and administrative data collected by the different actors in the European Commission.

• analysing and creating as many synergies as possible between the various fisheries data collections;

State of Play

Finalised: SWD(2019)425, 28/11/2019

Scope

- Regulation (EC) No 1921/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2006 on the submission of statistical data on landings of fishery products in Member States and repealing Council Regulation (EEC) No 1382/91

- Regulation (EC) No 216/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2009 on the submission of nominal catch statistics by Member States fishing in certain areas other than those of the North Atlantic

- Regulation (EC) No 217/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2009 on the submission of catch and activity statistics by Member States fishing in the north-west Atlantic (recast)

- Regulation (EC) No 218/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2009 on the submission of nominal catch statistics by Member States fishing in the north-east Atlantic (recast)

- Regulation (EC) No 762/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 July 2008 on the submission by Member States of statistics on aquaculture and repealing Council Regulation (EC) No 788/96

Evaluation Findings:

The main finding of the evaluation is that EFS are an important independent source of information, serving several types of user needs linked to the management of fisheries, market monitoring and research.

However, their relative added value to fisheries management has been on a downward trend, as other data sources such as the Control Regulation and the Data Collection Framework are better targeted and also include socioeconomic aspects, whereas European business, labour force and social statistics do not offer enough detail on the fisheries sector.

• Relevance: EFS have been serving their purpose in providing relevant statistics on fishery production and informing policy making in a wider context. However, their relevance has declined, as the Common Fisheries Policy imposes increasing requirements for data and information since its 2013 reform.

• Effectiveness: EFS are intensively used for market monitoring purposes and are also useful for international organisations such as FAO; however, they are not used to the extent expected for the needs of the Common Fisheries Policy. Part of the data is not available due to statistical confidentiality.

• Statistical Quality: The benefits of producing EFS are the increased quality standards of the data and the independence of the information, in particular where the related policy area is a common policy. The quality of EFS is considered as better than similar datasets created to cover fisheries policy needs.

• Efficiency: EFS have a limited cost because in most countries, catch, landing and aquaculture statistics are compiled from the raw data collected for policy purposes. Fishing fleet statistics are compiled directly by Eurostat from the EU fishing fleet register without any further intervention from Member States. However, each country has to report overlapping, slightly different datasets to several organisations at European and international levels, which creates inefficiency.

• Coherence: The internal coherence of EFS is good, but other European statistics linked to fisheries do not offer an optimal set-up to analyse the maritime economy in detail. There are persistent discrepancies between EFS and Control Regulation data. While they remain small overall, there are significant differences in Mediterranean countries where the fishing fleet contains a large number of small vessels.

• EU added value: Long, independent and comparable EFS time-series in a consolidated publicly available database could not be achieved by individual actions of countries. Discontinuing EFS would be a reputational risk for the Commission and in particular for the European Statistical System and Eurostat, as the Common Fisheries Policy would not have independent baseline statistics.

The Common Fisheries Policy requires good quality fishery statistics which are independent and fit for purpose, serve a wide range of user needs, and fit well into the overall international fisheries data ecosystem.

Estimated savings and benefits

The benefits expected from the initiative are a reduction of unnecessary burden in countries, simplification and increase of efficiency of fisheries statistics regulations. Moreover, fisheries statistics could become more useful and attract the interest of wider user groups if they had fewer overlaps with other data collections.

The collection of fisheries statistics is not financed directly by the Commission. Most source data are also collected for other purposes, so the total direct annual cost incurred by collecting and treating EFS in Member States and the Commission is approximately only €5.6 million. The main direct costs of modernisation for stakeholders relate to adapting the statistical and technical systems in the European statistical system. These adaptation costs are expected to be marginal. In the mid to long term, the new legal basis for EFS is expected to lead to a slightly lower burden and to cost savings in the region of 1.2 million € annually due to a more efficient data use and simplified data flows.