Research Article

The economic performance of the EU fishing fleet during the COVID-19 pandemic

¹ Independent Researcher, Brussels, Belgium
² European Environment Agency (EEA), Copenhagen, Denmark
³ European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy
⁴ AZTI, Sukarrieta, Spain
⁵ CRETUS, Department of Applied Economics, Campus Sur, University of Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña, Spain
⁶ University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
⁷ Fisheries Research Institute of Slovenia, Ljubljana, Slovenia
⁸ Thünen Institute of Sea Fisheries, Bremerhaven, Germany
⁹ Althea Consultant, Lampaul-Plouarzel, France
¹⁰ Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), Cork, Ireland
¹¹ European Commission, DG MARE, Brussels, Belgium
¹² Direção-Geral de Recursos Naturais, Segurança e Serviços Marítimos (DGRM), Lisbon, Portugal
¹³ Universidade de Vigo, Spain
¹⁴ Institute of Food Safety, Animal Health and Environment “BIOR”, Riga, Latvia
¹⁵ Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAPA), General Secretary for Fisheries, Madrid, Spain
¹⁶ NISEA, Fisheries and Aquaculture Economic Research, Salerno, Italy
¹⁷ IFREMER, UMR AMURE, Brest, France
¹⁸ Statistics Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark
¹⁹ Wageningen Economic Research, The Hague, The Netherlands
²⁰ Department of Fisheries and Marine Research, Nicosia, Cyprus
²¹ Des Requins et Des Hommes (DRDH), Plouzané, France
²² Agriculture Information and Rural Business Center, Vilnius, Lithuania
²³ Independent Researcher, Dublin, Ireland
²⁴ National Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Gdynia, Poland
²⁵ Estonian Marine Institute, University of Tartu, Tallinn, Estonia
²⁶ Ministry of Agriculture and Food, Paris, France
²⁷ Seafish, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
²⁸ Executive Agency for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Burgas, Bulgaria
²⁹ Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE), Helsinki, Finland
³⁰ EU Long Distance Fleet Advisory Council (LDAC), Madrid, Spain
³¹ Fisheries Research Unit, Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture, Marsa, Malta
³² University of Nantes, Nantes, France
³³ National Agency for Fisheries and Aquaculture of Romania, Bucarest, Romania
³⁴ Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management, Gothenburg, Sweden
³⁵ Agricultural Economics Research Institute HAO DEMETER, Athens, Greece
³⁶ ILVO – Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Ostend, Belgium
³⁷ Ministry of Agriculture, Directorate of Fisheries, Zagreb, Croatia

^* Corresponding author: jordi.guillen@ec.europa.eu

Handling Editor: Olivier Thebaud

Received: 31 January 2022
Accepted: 2 December 2022

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent public health interventions have depressed demand and disrupted supply chains for many fishing businesses. This paper provides an analysis of the COVID-19 impacts on the profitability of the EU fishing fleets. Nowcasting techniques were used to estimate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economic performance for the EU fishing fleet in 2020 and 2021. Our results show that the economic impact of COVID-19 on this sector was smaller than initially expected and overall profits remained positive. This was in part due to low fuel prices that reduced operating costs of fishing, and the early response from governments to support the sector. The results vary by fishing fleet, revealing that small-scale fleets and the fleets in the Mediterranean and Black seas have been more impacted than large-scale fleets and the fleets in the Northeast Atlantic.