A worker prepares canned anchovies at a factory in Laredo, Cantabria, Spain.
Photo: Juan Carlos Muñoz / Adobe Stock.
The European Commission has published its first annual social report on fisheries, aquaculture and seafood processing, highlighting falling employment, an ageing workforce and weak generational renewal as key challenges for Europe’s seafood industry.
Prepared by the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF), with support from the Commission’s Joint Research Centre, the report covers the period from 2017 to 2023 and provides an overview of employment, education, working conditions and other social indicators across the three sectors.
Although the report covers fisheries, aquaculture and processing, its first edition places particular emphasis on fisheries, where employment has declined across most of the EU and concerns over recruitment, wages and safety remain prominent.
In 2023, the EU fisheries, aquaculture and processing sectors employed an estimated 298,831 people. Fisheries accounted for 40% of those jobs, followed by fish processing at 37% and aquaculture at 23%.
The report found that employment in EU fisheries declined by 15% between 2017 and 2023, with Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus and Slovenia the only exceptions to the overall downward trend.
Meanwhile, full-time employment in the sector fell by 25% over the same period, which the Commission said suggests an increase in part-time or seasonal work.
Employment remains concentrated in southern Europe, particularly Greece, Spain, France, Italy and Portugal. More than half of fishers work on small-scale coastal vessels, while most active vessels are also part of this fleet.
The workforce remains heavily male, with women accounting for less than 5% of total employment in fisheries. However, the Commission noted that women are active in small-scale fisheries, shellfish gathering and seaweed gathering, and that their contribution is not fully captured by official statistics.
The report also raises concerns over the age profile of the fisheries workforce. In most countries, 50% of fishers are aged between 40 and 64.
The share of fishers under 40 fell from 31% to 26% between 2017 and 2023, pointing to a decline in generational renewal in the sector.
Wages also remain low compared with wider EU averages. In 2023, the average labour cost per full-time equivalent in fisheries was €29,447, less than half the EU average of €61,541. It was also below the national average in 16 of the EU’s 22 coastal countries.
The report also found that recorded accidents involving EU-flagged vessels increased from 106 in 2011 to 663 in 2023, before stabilising at around 600 per year. Most accidents involved vessels in the 0-12 metre and 24-45 metre size classes.
Across the three sectors, aquaculture employed 67,962 people in 2023, equal to 23% of the total workforce covered by the report.
Spain, France, Greece and Italy together accounted for 64% of the EU’s total aquaculture production volume.
The Commission described the EU aquaculture sector as diverse, although it represents less than 1% of global production. In 2022, aquaculture supplied 23% of the EU’s fish and shellfish.
The report also established that fish processing accounted for 110,879 jobs in 2023, representing 37% of total employment across the three sectors. The sector comprised 3,262 enterprises across the EU, around 67% of which were microfirms with fewer than 10 employees.
The report also notes changes in the nationality profile of fisheries workers. On average, 86% of fishers are nationals of their own EU country, a figure that has remained broadly stable since 2017.
However, the share of non-EU and non-EEA workers increased by 2.2 percentage points at EU level and now represents around 10% of the fisheries workforce. Lithuania, Malta, Spain, Belgium and Germany, as well as the large-scale and distant-water fleets, show higher dependence on non-national workers.
The European Commission said the report includes country-specific chapters for each EU member state with fisheries, aquaculture or processing sectors, providing national-level analysis to inform policies and initiatives. It added that more work is needed by the Commission and EU countries to improve the quality of social data collected, which would strengthen future editions of the report.
The data have also been used in the recent evaluation of the Common Fisheries Policy Regulation, which aims to ensure the long-term sustainability of EU fisheries and aquaculture by taking into account environmental, economic and social dimensions.
The Commission said it intends to expand the annual social report in future, providing a regular assessment of the social dimension of the EU fisheries sector.
The full report can be accessed via the European Commission's Joint Research Centre website.
