EU autonomous tariff quota for imported fisheries products

Public consultation: Sustainable imports of fishery products under the EU Autonomous Tariff Quota Regulation

Update

Autonomous trade measures (known as autonomous tariff quotas, ATQs) for fishery and aquaculture products enable the EU fish processing industry to import raw materials at reduced rates or duty-free from non-EU countries when processors have insufficient access to such materials.

The EU is reviewing whether to link access to the EU market under the ATQ regime to certain sustainability criteria. These criteria address issues such as the conservation and management of fish stocks, and the social and labour conditions in which fishing takes place.

As part of this review, the European Commission has launched a public consultation on the environmental, social, and economic consequences of the current ATQ regime. Interested stakeholders are invited to submit feedback before 3 July 2025.

Impacted Products

Fish and fisheries products

What is changing?

The current ATQ Regulation 2023/2720 provides tariff-free access on a first-come, first-served basis for specific quantities of fisheries products, but there are currently no sustainability criteria in relation to fish entering the EU under this Regulation.

The European Commission is evaluating whether such criteria should be introduced from 2026, and is collecting the views of stakeholders through a questionnaire that covers 10 questions including:

• “Do you think that the ATQ regime should be conditioned upon environmental sustainability criteria?”
• “Do you think that the use of the ATQ regime should be conditioned upon compliance of social sustainability criteria (e.g. working conditions, such as avoidance of forced labour)?”
• “To what extent would it be important to have more detailed information about the environmental and/or social sustainability of processed fisheries products along the value chain and up to the consumers?”

Participants have the opportunity to provide detailed feedback, and can choose for their comments not to be made public.

Why?

The lack of sustainability criteria in the ATQ Regulation raises questions about whether the EU can maintain a steady supply of fishery products in sufficient quantities and/or at competitive prices, and whether the Regulation is consistent with the EU’s broader sustainability ambitions. Including sustainability goals in ATQs for fish would complement other EU sustainability initiatives such as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.

Timeline

The Commission is considering introducing sustainability criteria into the ATQ regime after 2026.

What are the major implications for exporting countries?

If the EU chooses to introduce sustainability criteria into the ATQ regime, this could potentially link access to the EU to (for example) the country of origin’s ratification of environmental and/or labour conventions.

Recommended Actions

Interested stakeholders are invited to complete a questionnaire before 3 July that can be accessed online through the European Commission’s Have Your Say webpage.

The consultation is open to stakeholders in non-EU countries. Individuals can respond by clicking on “Go to consultation”, then “Respond to the questionnaire”. Organisations wishing to respond must be registered on the EU Transparency Register. If not yet registered, you will first need to:

1. Create an EU login account: this provides an electronic ID that allows you to consult various Commission sites
2. Register your organisation on the Transparency Register.

Background

Regulation 2023/2720 sets ATQs for certain fisheries products for the 2024–2026 period. The Regulation opens 31 quotas for unprocessed and semi-processed fisheries products – raw material then used by the EU’s food processing sector to meet the increasing demand for fishery products. For most products, the in-quota tariff is set at zero.

Resources

Sources