18 December 2025
FROM NET LOSSES TO NET GAINS: Shifting from destructive public spending to regenerate fisheries, employment and the climate
18 December 2025
As negotiations on the next European Union budget gather momentum, BLOOM’s new briefing exposes how long-standing political choices have locked EU fisheries funding into a model that contradicts the Union’s own objectives on sustainability, social equity, and climate action, at the expense of European taxpayers.
– Read our Briefing on EU Subsidies here –
Overfishing remains the leading driver of the destruction of marine ecosystems. Yet for decades, public subsidies have artificially increased fishing capacity and sustained segments of the fleet that would otherwise be unprofitable, fueling a continuous race for catches even as marine resources decline to levels that should have triggered restraint.
Subsidies are undermining the ocean’s ecological and climate functions
The ocean plays a central role in stabilizing the global climate. It absorbs more than 30 percent of carbon dioxide generated by human activities, while marine sediments store vast quantities of organic carbon, with estimates reaching up to 80 gigatons globally. This natural carbon sink is increasingly disturbed by trawling and other high impact fishing practices.
Despite this, public money continues to support fishing practices such as bottom trawling, which degrade marine habitats, weaken ecosystem resilience, and disrupt seabed carbon stores. Subsidies are therefore not only accelerating biodiversity loss, but also actively undermining climate mitigation and adaptation objectives.
A funding system that favours industrial fleets and marginalises small-scale fishers
The current EU funding framework has systematically favoured industrial fishing vessels, which represent no more than 24 percent of the EU fleet, yet have benefited disproportionately from capacity enhancing and operational subsidies that support fuel intensive and environmentally damaging practices.
Small scale fishers account for more than three quarters of the fleet but received only around 20% of EU fisheries funds until 2021, despite generating more jobs per tonne landed, higher added value, and operating with lower ecological pressure. Despite their central role in coastal communities, food security, and local economies, small scale fishers remain structurally underfunded and face persistent barriers to accessing EU aid due to complex procedures and the absence of targeted provisions.
The next EU budget is a decisive political moment
The EU is currently negotiating its future budget for 2028 to 2034. This should be a pivotal opportunity to correct the misalignment between public spending and stated policy priorities. Public funding should be guided by clear eligibility rules, policy coherence, and measurable outcomes.
However, the Commission’s proposal published on 16 July 2025 lacks the safeguards needed to ensure that EU money supports the transition of the fisheries sector rather than entrenching its most damaging elements. Without stronger conditions, the next budget risks perpetuating the same structural failures that have driven overcapacity, ecosystem degradation, and social imbalance.
This failure also places the EU in contradiction with its international commitments, including the Sustainable Development Goals and the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, which require governments to eliminate subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, as well as illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
BLOOM’s recommendations to turn the tide
To shift from a net loss to a net gain for European citizens, fishers, and marine ecosystems, BLOOM calls for a reorientation of eligibility criteria and allocation rules across all EU fisheries funding instruments, ensuring that public money is coherent with stated EU priorities and serves the protection of public goods.
BLOOM recommends a funding framework structured around three core pillars:
1. Beneficial subsidies to fund transition and ecosystem recovery, not destruction
Include the obligation to allocate 50 percent of the national envelope dedicated to fisheries to science-based restoration and protection measures that deliver long term benefits for marine ecosystems, including the recovery of fish stocks and the protection of ocean carbon sinks.
2. Fair subsidies to make small scale fisheries a structural priority
Ensure preferential access to aid for small scale, local, and coastal fisheries, earmarking 50 percent of the national envelope dedicated to fisheries for small scale fishers and the transition of fisheries to less destructive practices.
3. Accountable funding with transparency, conditionality, and enforcement
Ensure that public money is allocated only to operators that meet eligibility criteria and comply with EU law, through binding transparency requirements, clear and measurable conditions attached to funding, and strengthened control and enforcement mechanisms across all EU fisheries funding instruments.
– Read our Briefing on EU Subsidies here –
A political choice
Decisions taken in the coming years will determine whether EU financial instruments serve as a lever for transition or continue to entrench the very dynamics that are driving the collapse of marine ecosystems and the erosion of coastal livelihoods.
Ending subsidies for destructive fishing practices, including fossil fuel tax exemptions, and redirecting public support towards small scale fisheries and ecosystem restoration is a political choice between prioritising short term private interests or a living, resilient ocean with sustainable fisheries for the benefit of society as a whole.