The external and commercial dimensions of the EU fisheries policy: An institutional approach applied to the whitefish case

This paper discusses the connections that exist between several policy areas concerning fisheries, namely fisheries management and regulations in internal and external waters as well as commercial policies. An institutional approach isused to describe the system by indicating the causal interactions and feedbacks that exist between rules, stocks, catches, imports, and prices.The European Union,as one of the major players in the fishing industry and market, is considered as the case study. The key argument of the paper is that when catches decrease, essentially because of the use of inappropriate management tools and strategy, national interest moves from fishers to other categories such as processors and consumers, which involves several changes to external policies. Theanalys is presented here in shows that this is exactly what is happening in the case of whitefish. Furthermore, the changing habits and preferences of EU consumers have resulted in increasing substitution possibilities between different species, most of which are imported. This fact combined with there duced level of EU catches means that the EU is decreasingly able to affect international prices.