Karmenu Vella, Commissioner for environment, maritime affairs and fisheries, said: "It is encouraging to see that the positive trend of the last years has resulted in higher salaries for fishermen, bigger profits for the fishing sector and more value added for the EU's fishing and coastal communities. This clearly shows that our joint commitment towards more sustainable fishing pays off. But more efforts are needed to allow also small scale coastal fleets, in particular in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, to fully benefit from this positive trend. Continued progress towards Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) in all sea basins will therefore be a precondition for achieving economic viability.
In 2015, the EU fleet's gross value added, i.e. the contribution of the fish catching sector to the economy through wages and gross profit, amounted to €3.9 billion. This represents a 16% increase compared to 2013. Average salaries in the EU fleet have also increased while average fuel consumption has decreased. Fuel use efficiency has improved, with fuel costs amounting to 15% of the total revenue in 2015, compared to 24% in 2008. This is largely because fleets tend to operate more efficiently.
The overall improved economic situation of the fleet coincides with the increase in the number of fish stocks that are being fished sustainably, i.e. allowing the fishing industry to harvest the maximum amount of fish on a long term basis. An increasing number of fleets that exploit stocks sustainably see clear improvements in their profitability and salaries.
Despite this general upward trend, there are still a significant number of EU fleets that lag behind in terms of profitability, in particular small-scale costal fleets and fleets operating in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, where poor economic performance is mainly due to the bad status and continued overexploitation of many stocks and to decreases in the first-sale prices for some species.
The 2017 Annual Economic Report on the EU Fishing Fleet is based on data provided by national authorities under the EU Data Collection Framework (DCF) and the result of combined work by economic experts from the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee of Fisheries (STECF), the Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Commission's Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (DG MARE).