A new European Parliament study has produced the most detailed map yet of how the EU’s 22 coastal member states decide who gets to fish and how much. Allocation of fishing opportunities in the EU, commissioned by the Parliament’s Fisheries Committee (PECH) and published in August 2026 by independent consultant Griffin Carpenter, compiles 237 examples of allocation criteria in use across the bloc, drawing on Commission questionnaires, national legislation and direct correspondence with fisheries administrations. Its findings work on two levels. At the fleet-wide level, it shows an allocation system dominated by historical catch record and remarkably resistant to the environmental and social reform that Article 17 of the Common Fisheries Policy was meant to drive. Look specifically at the small-scale and coastal fleet within that system, and the same pattern of inertia produces a starker outcome: formal recognition on paper, but a fraction of the pie in practice.
The first thing the study establishes is that “fishing opportunities” are not just quota tonnage. They also take the form of fishing effort, days at sea, kilowatt-days, capacity limits, and, in several Mediterranean states, licensing systems tied to specific fisheries. The study catalogues 59 country-system combinations for quota management alone. The two most common approaches EU-wide are the total quota pool, used in 19 cases, where a stock’s quota is managed collectively rather than split into individual holdings, and the individual quota, used in 13 cases, where each licence holds its own fixed share. Individual transferable quotas (ITQs), where shares can be bought and sold, appear in nine cases and are concentrated among the higher-income Nordic states. Nearly every member state runs more than one system simultaneously, commonly a pooled system for smaller vessels and an individualised system for the larger-scale fleet.
This structural choice matters because it fundamentally shapes what allocation criteria can even do. Where quota is pooled, as it commonly is for smaller vessels, criteria can only govern who gets access to the pool, not how much any individual vessel lands from it. Where quota is individualised, typically the case for larger-scale operators, criteria can shape the actual size of each vessel’s share. The study argues this distinction has been under-examined in EU policy debate, which tends to focus almost entirely on the criteria themselves rather than the management architecture they sit inside, an architecture that, by design, treats different segments of the same national fleet quite differently from the outset.
Historical catch still runs the show
Article 17 of the CFP Regulation, in force since 2014, requires member states to allocate opportunities using transparent and objective criteria, including environmental, social and economic factors. In practice, the study finds that historical track record, a vessel’s or operator’s documented catch over a past reference period, remains the dominant criterion almost everywhere. It is used by 21 of the 22 coastal states and accounts for roughly two-thirds of the total weighting given to allocation criteria on average, according to member states’ own self-reported figures. Only the Netherlands relies on it as the sole criterion; every other state that uses it combines it with something else, but rarely as more than a minor adjustment.
The study sets out the standard justifications member states give for leaning so heavily on historical track record: it is seen as fair because it avoids disrupting existing livelihoods, it is administratively simple because catch records already exist, it has deep legal precedent stretching back to the CFP’s founding principle of relative stability, and it supports investment certainty for the sector. Reference periods vary considerably, from two years in Germany to ten years in Spain, with three years the most common choice. The trouble, as the study notes elsewhere, is that a criterion built around existing catch history structurally favours whoever was already fishing hardest when the reference period was set, which tends not to be the smaller end of the fleet.
Beyond historical record, equal allocation or equal access, simply splitting opportunities evenly among eligible vessels, is used just as widely, in 21 of 22 states, though usually for smaller, secondary pools rather than as the primary mechanism. Capacity-based criteria, generally vessel length, tonnage or engine power, are used in 11 states, mostly to segment the fleet into larger and smaller groups before other criteria are applied within each segment, an approach that determines, at the outset, how much of the national quota each part of the fleet is even competing for.
Social, economic and environmental criteria: present but marginal
Nineteen of the 22 states apply at least one social or economic criterion. The most common, present in 13 states, is a coastal or small-scale fisheries criterion intended to recognise the character and economic importance of smaller, community-based fleets. Others include rewarding efficient use of existing quota (13 states), provisions for newcomers entering the fishery for the first time (12 states), and support for specific local fishing communities (10 states). Environmental criteria are considerably rarer, used in just 11 states, and in almost every one of those cases the criterion is a simple binary distinction, typically passive gear versus active gear, rather than any assessment of actual environmental performance across a range. No member state currently allocates opportunities based on fishing technique or the sensitivity of the area fished, and none uses a graduated, performance-based environmental scale. The study is blunt about this: the “endeavour” language in Article 17 has, in practice, produced criteria the authors describe as blunt instruments offering limited environmental incentive.
The coastal/small-scale fisheries criterion deserves closer attention precisely because it is so widely used yet, the study cautions, often confers only a modest advantage in practice, sometimes no more than a quota top-up, a ring-fenced reserve, or optional fleet separation, rather than a fundamental rebalancing of shares. Averaged across the fifteen states that gave the Commission a full weighting breakdown, historical track record took 67% of total weighting, environmental criteria 13%, social and economic criteria, the category that includes small-scale support, 12%, and other criteria 8%. Four states reported historical track record as their sole criterion; only four reported it accounting for less than half of total weighting.
What this means for the small-scale and coastal fleet
Put the weighting data alongside landings, and the practical effect on smaller vessels becomes clear. The small-scale and coastal fleet, defined EU-wide as vessels under 12 metres using passive gear, represents 77% of all EU fishing vessels and 49% of employed crew, according to the most recent STECF economic data cited in the study, yet captures just 4% of the landed value of quota species across the bloc. That gap is not simply explained by smaller vessels targeting different, non-quota species; even accounting for that, the study finds a persistent shortfall between the fleet’s formal recognition in allocation policy and its material share of the actual catch.
Where member states have made deliberate reallocations toward smaller vessels in recent years, the results have not shown a clear improvement. The study tracks four such reallocations: Denmark’s Coastal Fishing Scheme for demersal species (2017), and bluefin tuna reallocations in France (2021 and 2024), Malta (2019 and 2023) and Spain (2023). In Denmark, the smaller fleet’s landed-value share of the reallocated demersal species has actually fallen since the reform, likely swamped by the collapse of Baltic cod stocks. In France the share has stayed flat and low. Malta’s figures fluctuate too widely to draw a conclusion, and Spain’s reallocation is too recent to assess. The study’s own caveat is important here: these were small reallocations set against much larger underlying allocation systems still weighted overwhelmingly toward historical record, and stock decline is likely doing more to shape smaller-vessel landings than the reallocation policies themselves.
Twelve years, no findings of non-compliance
Perhaps the most striking institutional finding, and one that applies equally to the fleet-wide picture and to the small-scale fleet’s position within it, is that the European Commission has never once, in the twelve years Article 17 has been in force, found a member state’s allocation system to be non-compliant. The Commission’s own 2025 Communication and accompanying “vade mecum” acknowledges what it calls “a degree of inertia” in how fishing opportunities are allocated, conceding that some reported methods “do not appear to address adequately emerging challenges faced by EU fisheries.” Yet the document sets out good practice guidance rather than new binding requirements and reaffirms that the choice of allocation system and criteria weighting remains squarely a national competence.
How Ireland’s system fits the wider pattern
Ireland’s allocation system, as catalogued in the study, uses criteria from all four categories tracked, historical track record, social and economic, environmental, and “other”, making it one of the more criteria-diverse member states rather than an exception to the general pattern. The core of the Irish system separates the fleet by vessel length, broadly at 16.76 metres, with the polyvalent segment managed through an individually rationed quota pool, a structure the study notes is common across the EU for mixed, multi-species fleets. Within that structure, individual shares for most demersal and pelagic stocks are set primarily on historical catch record, in line with the EU-wide pattern.
Layered on top are reserves aimed specifically at smaller vessels: a 2.5% open mackerel reserve for vessels under 18 metres with no prior track record, a separate 400-tonne hook-and-line reserve restricted to vessels under 15 metres using passive gear, and a 350-tonne ring-fenced herring allocation in area 6a for vessels under 20 metres, with access for excluded vessels determined by lottery rather than by further criteria, an approach the study flags as one of the more unusual mechanisms recorded in the whole dataset. On the environmental side, Ireland offers a quota top-up for haddock landed using selective gear such as Danish or Scottish fly seines, and the study separately notes a pilot programme setting aside quota to trial environmentally friendly gear more broadly.
Set against that architecture, the outcome data shows the same gap found EU-wide, only more pronounced. Ireland’s small-scale and coastal fleet accounted for just 1% of the landed value of quota species in 2023, the lowest share of any member state bar Cyprus and the Netherlands, which recorded 0%. Quota species made up only 7% of Irish small-scale landed-value activity, against 75% for the Irish fleet as a whole, meaning Ireland’s smaller boats are, by international comparison, unusually dependent on non-quota species, precisely the part of their business that receives no protection from allocation criteria at all. On transparency, Ireland self-reported to the Commission that it consults interested parties, embeds its process in law, and publishes both process and outcome, but the study’s independent check found no published Irish register linking specific fishing opportunities to individual licences, placing Ireland among the majority of states whose self-reported outcome transparency could not be corroborated. Only Estonia was confirmed to maintain a comprehensive, currently accessible public register of that kind.
What the study says still needs doing
The report is candid about the limits of its own analysis, on both fronts. Much of the public and policy debate on allocation, and much of the Commission’s own questionnaire design, is weighted heavily toward quota-managed stocks, leaving effort-based systems, days at sea, licence limits, capacity caps, comparatively unexamined despite being the primary management tool in several member states, particularly around the Mediterranean, and despite being where much smaller-vessel activity actually takes place. Pooled systems present a related gap on both counts: because the logic of Article 17 assumes individual holdings that can be adjusted up or down as an incentive, pooled arrangements, common precisely among the smaller vessel segments this article has focused on, sit awkwardly with the provision’s underlying design and are flagged as warranting more explicit attention in future work.
The study’s recommendations reflect the reality that allocation remains a national competence the Commission cannot simply override. Rather than proposing new enforcement powers, the authors call for structured peer learning between member states drawing on the classification framework the study itself builds, technical support for states willing to pilot genuine performance-based rather than binary environmental criteria, encouragement, not compulsion, for wider publication of outcome-level quota registers, a redesigned Commission questionnaire that separates high-level policy goals from the specific criteria used to pursue them and properly captures effort-based and pooled systems, and a published methodology setting out how the Commission actually assesses alignment with Articles 16 and 17.
Taken together, the study leaves both the fleet-wide picture and the small-scale fleet’s position within it resting on the same conclusion: allocation policy across the EU has changed only marginally since 2014, historical catch record remains the load-bearing criterion almost everywhere, and the practical scope for a different balance, whether toward environmental performance, newcomer access, or genuinely improving the smaller fleet’s material share, rests with national administrations choosing to use the discretion they already hold rather than with any prospect of fresh direction from Brussels.
Source: Griffin Carpenter, Allocation of fishing opportunities in the EU, Policy Department for Regional Development, Agriculture and Fisheries, European Parliament (PE 776.025), August 2026.
