The new Common Fisheries Policy and its landing obligation- Implications for governability and legitimacy. A case study of the Scottish mixed roundfish trawl fishery

Abstract

The European Union has been applying a top-down and centralized approach to management of fish stocks to try dealing with the complexity of the marine environment. Since the establishment of the Common Fisheries Policy in 1983 the principle of relative stability has maintained the main resource “conservation” component of the policy, despite all its criticism for being the major driving factor for discards in for example the North Sea fisheries. In addition a focus has been placed on landings rather than catches, simplifying the problem of incidental catches to remove liability of the fishermen. A ban on discards and an obligation to land all commercial catches are now to be implemented. The obligation has received much attention from the public, governing agencies of member states and fishers themselves. The success of the change depend both on new regulations and if the EU gets fishers on the same page through normative and cognitive change among the fishers. This way it is possible to create governmentality which will favor governability of a landing obligation as fishers will self-govern themselves and others to avoid wasting marine resources. The ecological complexity combined with the complex regulative framework consisting of a path dependent principle of relative stability makes it difficult to change the system.