11 June 2026
Exclusive analysis reveals how thirty years of European subsidies have wrecked the ocean and fishers
11 June 2026
As the European Union gears up to adopt a new budget for the 2028–2034 period and renew its support for the European fishing sector to the tune of just over €7 billion, BLOOM releases an exclusive analysis called “Wasted billions” to answer essential questions such as: how much exactly has been granted to the fishing sector since the inception of dedicated European public subsidies in 1994? And what has been achieved with the multi-billion euro bonanza?
To cut the suspense short: nothing positive, unfortunately. More than three decades of various European financial instruments dedicated to the fishing sector have resulted in wrecking the ocean, the livelihoods of fishers and entire fishing communities in the European Union on top of undermining food sovereignty and the economic performance of the sector.
In itself, the process of completing this research speaks volumes of the fishing sector’s dysfunctional governance.
Because our research strictly focused on public spending, one could have expected that transparency would prevail and that all data relative to the public financial support provided to the fishing sector would be fully accessible. This is not the case. The data are so opaque or incomplete that it is almost impossible to provide an exhaustive assessment of public expenditures made to the fishing sector without time-consuming research plunging in the scattered subsidy files of each Member State. Despite this non-accidental opacity, BLOOM researchers have managed to reconstruct EU public subsidies to the fishing sector in broad strokes.
Read our report: “Wasted Billions”
BLOOM’s researchers have produced:
1) Unprecedented clarity on the global public subsidy amounts to the fishing sector
2) A classification of amounts by category of spending
3) A ground-breaking overview of the general trends that characterize over 30 years of public grants
4) A ranking of EU Member State beneficiaries of fish subsidies highlighting winners of the system
Calculating such basic knowledge provided clarity in an ocean of opacity. Here are the main findings:
1. The European fishing industry is 100% subsidised
For the first time, BLOOM has compiled the total amounts of subsidies granted annually by the EU. Even excluding State aid and other national or regional financial schemes, including numerous forms of indirect support, and without taking into account the Structural Funds (i.e. therefore only counting the fuel tax exemption and fisheries agreements), it appears that the volume of EU public subsidies (around €1.6 billion) exceeds the profits of the commercial fishing sector (around €1.2 billion). The amount of subsidies would therefore far exceed the meagre profit generated by fishing operations. The European fishing sector generates no profit of its own: its reported surplus relies entirely on public subsidies.
If European fishers fully rely on subsidies to operate activities that consist in simply “harvesting” wild food that they have not produced, and in a context of chronic overexploitation of resources, climate change acceleration and controversial destructive fishing gears, this calls for the urgent reinforcement of public intervention to change course and save not only the ocean and marine species but fishers themselves.
“If the European budget were managed by a CEO, he’d be in trouble with his shareholders right now” commented Frédéric Le Manach, BLOOM’s scientific director. “Public funding has not just failed to improve the situation, it’s actually made it a lot worse, as the categories most dependent on subsidies are the most destructive segments of the EU fleet, first and foremost industrial high-impact bottom trawlers. In the absence of a captain for the EU’s fishing sector, we need the Parliament to act with bravery and look at the dire situation straight in the eyes when it votes on the EU budget and objectives for the fishing sector this autumn.”
2. European funds have failed to protect the ocean and the sector itself
BLOOM’s analysis shows that the EU has allocated about €31 billion (in constant euros) of EU structural funds alone to the fishing sector since 1994. (1) This amount does not include counterpart spending by Member States, nor national subsidy schemes or Fishing Agreements with non-EU countries to access their waters, let alone the indirect subsidies provided to the fishing sector in the form of fuel tax breaks.
The subsidy synthesis of EU structural funds allows one striking problem to stick out: the chronic under-investment in the protection of the ocean, despite the fishing sector being a “harvesting” and not a “productive” sector per se, with fishers entirely relying on the capped production capacity of the ocean. More boats do not turn over more fish, on the contrary; a basic understanding that the EU seems to have forgotten as it has allocated a mere 2.7% on average of public fishing subsidies to the protection and restoration of the ocean since 1994.
As a result of almost inexistent true “Marine Protected Areas” where bottom trawling and other destructive activities are prohibited, the EU’s oceans and seas are the most trawled in the world, with more than 50% of its surface regularly impacted, compared to a global average of 14%.
The EU’s under-investment in ocean protection, combined with overwhelming amount of scientific assessments pointing to the degraded state of European waters, shows that Europe has protected large-scale trawling, not the ocean. BLOOM had even previously calculated that around a quarter (26.7%) of European trawl fishing effort took place inside MPAs. (3)
This is even more regrettable with studies in mind showing that fish biomass in marine reserves is on average 670% higher than in surrounding unprotected waters. (4) Strategically placed marine areas covering 28% of the ocean could increase the supply of marine food resources by 5.9 million tons per year compared to a business-as-usual scenario with no additional protection and undiminished fishing pressure.
The benefits associated with banning bottom trawling in EU MPAs have been estimated to be positive as early as the fourth year after the ban was introduced. The economic benefits would reach a maximum net value of 600 million euros. (5)
Meanwhile, we have calculated that, between 2014 and 2020, sustainable small-scale fishers have only received 1% of public subsidies on the EMFF financial instrument (European Maritime and Fisheries Fund).
Protecting the ocean is the cornerstone of the economic and social restoration of the European fishing sector. This is what MEPs should bear in mind when voting for a budgetary reform of public subsidies to the fishing sector.
Read our report: “Wasted Billions”
3. Construction, demolition and lack of preparation: the three major trends of 30 years of European public funding to the fishing sector
Since its inception in 1994, public funding of the European fishing sector has been characterised by three major trends:
• 1994–2000: An initial phase of funding for the construction and modernisation of increasingly powerful vessels that ignored scientific warnings about overexploitation of the ocean, destructive fishing gears and dwindling fish populations.
• 2000–2010: A change of course, with funding to support the demolition of recently-built vessels and/or the exportation of our fishing capacity to other countries (notably in Africa)
• 2010–2020 and 2021–present: Further funding seeking to address the crises generated by the two previous phases without, however, undertaking any structural transformation of the sector. This third phase is also particularly characterised by significant funding for aquaculture.
In short, over 30 years of European public funding has not only failed to prepare the sector for a transition towards practices that would safeguard jobs, resources and the EU’s food sovereignty, but also financed counterproductive and wasteful practices which have pushed the sector into unprecedented insecurity. The inability to break away from the extreme energy dependence of high-impact fishing fleets using towed gear, such as trawls and seines, has further contributed to the sector’s demise.
4. Ranking of beneficiaries of EU Fisheries subsidies: Spain excels at fishing for subsidies
A new ranking of beneficiaries of structural funds from the FIFG 1 (1994–1999) to the EMFF (2021–2027) shows Spain dominating across all categories as the clear winner in the race for fishing subsidies in Brussels.
Spain’s commercial fleet is the third largest in Europe, but it remains smaller in terms of the number of vessels (8,324 in 2025) than those of Italy (12,321 vessels) and Greece (11,452). However, it ranks first in terms of tonnage, with 301k GT out of 1,232k GT at European level. This demonstrates the choice of public policies to support the industrial segments of the fleets rather than employment and sustainable practices.
Spain’s clear success in securing such an overwhelming share of European public funds can be attributed to the Spanish Government’s recognized ability to influence EU policies in favour of the Iberian fishing industry.
Freeing ourselves from the influence of industrial lobbies in the context of European negotiations on the future of the oceans and the fishing sector is a prerequisite for the success of the reform of the European budget.
Conclusion
Despite the EU’s stated objectives regarding the protection and restoration of marine biodiversity and habitats, (6, 7, 8) as well as climate change mitigation, (9) public funds continue to support activities that contribute directly or indirectly to the degradation of marine species, marine ecosystems and the oceans’ ability to sequester carbon.
As the European Court of Auditors regrettably stated in a 2020 assessment of the EU ocean protection policies: (10) “EU actions have not restored seas to good environmental status nor fishing to sustainable levels in all seas. EU protection rules have not led to the recovery of significant ecosystems and habitats; Marine Protected Areas provide limited protection; provisions to coordinate fisheries policy with marine protection policy are little used in practice; and relatively few of the available funds are used for conservation measures”.
As a conclusion, Flaminia Tacconi, Head of BLOOM’s EU Subsidies Campaign, argues: “Billions of euros have been wasted. The time has come to stop using European public money against our own interest. With the current EU budget reform, European institutions have an opportunity to things right. If they miss the window, other European waters might follow the same tragic course as the Baltic Sea, which is experiencing ecological and socio-economic collapse.”
Changing course and managing the European budget for the fishing sector more effectively is no longer a matter of political, ideological, or social or environmental preference. It has become a straightforward urgent priority for Europe.
The future of EU funds
Working on the basis that this failure is not inevitable, BLOOM proposes ways to improve the management of public funds allocated to the fishing sector, set out as five structural imperatives for the future fund:
1) Recentralize data at the European Commission level. Since responsibility for aggregating and publishing the sector’s financial data is handled by Member States, both the quality and transparency of this information have significantly declined. We are thus calling for the re-centralization, at the European Commission level, of all data relating to public funds allocated to the fishing sector.
2) Ensure that an ecological restoration, which is a prerequisite for the economic recovery of the fishing sector, is a financial priority for the EU. With only 7% of the EMFAF allocated to the protection and restoration of biodiversity, the EU is falling far short of its own commitments, whilst the Union’s severely degraded marine environments are both the consequence of poor management and the reason for the sector’s inability to emerge from the crisis. The next fund must therefore increase the proportion of funds allocated to marine protection to 50% of the overall budget of the sector-specific regulation, with the remaining 50% of the funds directed to small-scale coastal fisheries and the transition of fisheries (see points 4 and 5 below).
3) End funding for overcapacity. Any financial aid for modernizing or for increasing fishing capacity in fleet segments that exploit depleted stocks must be explicitly prohibited. The current monitoring and enforcement mechanisms are inadequate. Without credible and binding conditions, the next fund will repeat the mistakes of those that came before it.
4) Make the allocation of public aid conditional on a structural transition of the fishing sector to ensure its survival. The age of the fleet and the challenge of its renewal present a unique opportunity to replace bottom trawlers with pots, lines and gillnets. The protection of ecosystems through the exclusion of industrial fishing from European coasts, the implementation of genuine MPAs and better protection of juveniles are other essential conditions for ensuring the long-term sustainability of fisheries.
5) Fund the gradual phase-out of the most fuel-intensive fishing vessels. Under the impact of trawling, fish stocks have fallen drastically and food chains have been disrupted, so much so that the effective capacity of vessels to land fish has plummeted. Phasing out bottom trawling and replacing it with less impactful gear has become an urgent measure to revive employment in the fishing sector and free it from its dependence on fossil fuels.
Read our report: “Wasted Billions”
NOTES
(1) 22 billion current euros were spent in EU Structural funds since 1994, that is 31 billion in constant euros.
(2) Exploring alternatives to Europe’s bottom trawl fishing gears, Seas at Risk & Oceana, 2022.
(3) Bulldozed. An unprecedented analysis of trawling in European marine “protected” areas, BLOOM, March 2024
(4) Enric Sala and Sylvaine Giakoumi. “No-take marine reserves are the most effective protected areas in the ocean.” ICES Journal of Marine Science 75.3 (2018): 1166-1168.
(5) Enric Sala and Sylvaine Giakoumi. “No-take marine reserves are the most effective protected areas in the ocean.” ICES Journal of Marine Science 75.3 (2018): 1166-1168.
(6) EU Action Plan: Protecting and restoring marine ecosystems for sustainable and resilient fisheries, Communication from the Commission, COM(2023) 102 final.
(8) Nature Restoration Regulation (EU) 2024/1991 of the European Parliament and of the Council.
(9) ‘European Climate Law’ Regulation (EU) 2021/1119 of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the framework for achieving climate neutrality and amending Regulations.
(10) European Court of Auditors Special Report pursuant to Article 287(4), second subparagraph, TFEU: “Marine environment: EU protection is wide but not deep”, 2020.