ABSTRACT
Until the 1970s, fishing in international waters was a free activity: vessels could catch anywhere they wanted. The principle of free access to high waters came under pressure in view of the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which eventually recognized the rights of coastal states to create an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles (approximately 300 km). To meet the high demand in Europe, the European Union (EU) had no choice but to negotiate agreements with third countries – the majority of which were in Africa – in return for financial compensation. The prevalently commercial nature of these fisheries access agreements (FAAs) made them incoherent with other policies, notably environment and development. While the fees paid by the EU represented an important source of revenue for poor countries, the presence of foreign fleets constituted an obstacle to the development of local fisheries, a major cause of overfishing, and a hazard to food security. The reform adopted in the early 2000s was meant to end the exclusively commercial nature of the FAAs and mark the beginning of a new approach, based on the conclusion of fisheries partnership agreements (FPAs) in line with the principles of ownership and sustainable development. Though the fisheriesdevelopment nexus has been reinforced, initial assessments of these FPAs suggest that no radical change has taken place. Meanwhile, the negotiation of a new trade regime between the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states raised many concerns among African countries and in particular those who do not belong to the group of least-developed countries (LDCs), about a potential erosion of their preferential treatment in their fisheries exports to the EU market. To understand the changing dynamics between the EU and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in fisheries policy, this chapter is divided into three sections. The first section provides a general overview of the politics of fisheries and development. It discusses the relevance of the fisheries sector for developing countries, the external dimension of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), and the changes made in the EU’s relations with the developing world, in the areas of policy coherence and sustainable development. The second section concentrates
on the various fisheries agreements signed between 1979 and the late 2000s. It first reviews the main rationale for the EU and third countries to negotiate FAAs, including their main criticisms. It then focuses on the FPAs, asking whether these are real partnerships or still access agreements or, in other words, whether the EU places its interests before not only the needs of the developing countries, but also its claim to be a sustainable development actor. The third section considers the fisheries component in the trade and aid chapters of the various EU-ACP conventions. Particular relevance is given to the implications of the changes introduced by the Cotonou Agreement, particularly the negotiations of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), for fisheries exports and more generally for the development of coastal ACP countries.
