Maritime and fisheries policy

← Maritime and fisheries policy

Sustainable management of external fishing fleets (SMEFF)

Overall state of play:

• Commission proposal adopted on 10 December 2015, COM(2015)636
• Legal act: adopted on 12 December 2017, entered into force on 17 January 2018, Regulation (EU) 2017/2403.

State of play, main conclusions, outlook

Regulation (EC) No1006/2008 on Fishing Authorisation (the 'FAR') was intended to deal with authorisations of Union vessels to fish outside Union waters and authorisations granted to third country fishing vessels to operate in Union waters.

The Commission proposed a revision of the FAR in 2015 to regulate direct authorisations (not subject to obligations until then), to comply with EU international duties and responsibilities and provide transparency on EU external fishing activities. The SMEFF covers all authorisations and clarifies responsibilities at Union, national and operator level, as well as bringing the FAR in line with the Basic Regulation (Common Fisheries Policy) and the Control Regulation. The Regulation was adopted in 2017 (Regulation (EU) 2017/2403) and it retained the simplification objectives proposed by the Commission with no significant variations. Regular monitoring with national administrations might lead to an evaluation in 2023/2024.

State of Play:

• Adopted by the Commission on 10 December 2015, COM(2015)636

Which objective(s) does the Commission pursue?

Revision of the Fishing Authorisation Regulation (FAR) was proposed to harmonise authorisations criteria and simplify the authorisations system, previously displaying highly variable requirements at Member States’ level and improve the efficiency of sanctions.

The proposed Regulation was meant to ensure consistency between the FAR, the IUU (rules to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing) and control legal frameworks; as well as with the objectives of the External Dimension of the CFP policy in terms of sustainability and enforcement.

The proposal intended also to prevent repetitive and abusive reflagging, meaning, changing the flag with the objective of circumventing the laws, chartering, regulate private authorisations (granted outside SFPA) and fishing on the high seas, and simplify and clarify tasks between the Commission and Member States' authorities.

State of Play:

Adopted on 12 December 2017, Regulation (EU) 2017/2403

Outcome of Legislative Procedure

The proposed simplification objectives were retained with no significant variations from the Commission proposal. In practice, it means that there are now well-defined responsibilities between the Commission and Member States regarding the monitoring of external fishing fleets together with common eligibility criteria against which authorisations can be granted.

State of Play:

Ongoing

Implementation by the Commission

In application of article 40, technical requirements have been implemented by the Commission, through the setting up of the LICENCE IT Tool, for which technical operational requirements have been set in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/38 of 16 January 2020.

During 2022 LICENCE IT tool started to manage fishing authorisations for several coastal parties, including UK and Norwegian vessels in the EU waters and EU vessels in UK and Norwegian waters.

The content of the public part of the registry is available on internet on DG MARE webpage, while the Fishing Authorisations public website is planned to be launched early 2023.

The SMEFF has provided the relevant legal framework for fishing authorisations given to the third-country fleet in EU waters and for fishing authorisations given to the EU fleet in external waters. Thus, since Brexit, it has also been implemented for activities of UK fleet in EU waters and to Union vessels in UK waters under the TCA.