The politics of fisheries in the European Union

Abstract:

In this work the author has chosen the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) to illuminate wider issues of polity within the EU such as the distribution of power, the representation of interests at national and transnational levels, the allocation of budgets and resources, and the EU's place as an actor on the global stage.

The book is organised over seven chapters. The first chapter examines the origins and development of the CFP, discussing the institutional principles and aims, and showing how these have arisen. Chapter two addresses the actors and the institutions, exploring the distribution of power among the supranational, national and local politico-administrative institutions within the European polity, and the interconnections between the interest representations of national and local actors and the encompassing EU polity. Chapter three examines the regulatory aspects and the EU's fishery conservation policy, while chapter four focuses on the distribution and redistribution mechanisms operated by the EU. The conflict between historical territorial fishing rights and the free market in goods and services is explored in the fifth chapter. Global environmental concerns are the feature of chapter six, which considers how the protection of dolphins became established as a global norm. Chapter seven discusses the role of the EU as an international actor in three areas - trade policy, fishing agreements with non-member countries and EU participation in regional fishing organisations.

The book will interest students of EU policy and academics concerned with the fisheries industries.

Christian Lequesne is a Senior Research Fellow at Sciences Po, Paris, and a Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges. He is currently Director of the French Center on Social Sciences Research (CEFRES), Prague.