In its new report, CFFA explores how the concept of surplus is integrated in the new EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) regulation. The CFP makes the concept of surplus a corner stone of EU access to third country waters through its bilateral fisheries agreements.

The EU has presented this approach as a progress achieved through the CFP reform. It is nevertheless a basic legal principle of access agreements as set up by UNCLOS since 1982, and not new to the CFP external dimension.

It has to be understood in the framework of the creation of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), where a Coastal States has sovereign rights for the purpose of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing living resources of the seabed, subsoil and superjacent waters in its EEZ.

In parallel to these sovereign rights, Coastal States have the duty to assess the status of resources in their waters for management and conservation purposes, in order to allocate fishing opportunities to their how national fleets. The Coastal State has the right to allocate to foreign States the “surplus” that it cannot exploit itself.

The availability of a surplus following the determination of its harvesting capacity by the coastal State is the "raison d'être" of the conclusion of agreements granting access. Bilateral agreements between the EU and third countries, mostly African and Indian Ocean developing countries, have always been based on these rules, but not always applied by the book; in the past, we can find numerous examples where EU fleets access to third countries fisheries through bilateral access agreements were not based on the existence of a proven surplus.

Have things changed today, with the entry into force of the new Common Fisheries Policy?