Regionalising the Common Fisheries Policy: context, content and controversy

The European Union (EU) has been slow to recognise the benefits of regionalising the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) and even now the Commission's advocacy appears to lack the assuredness of conviction. To understand this reluctant conversion, the paper explains how increasing pressures for radical reform - enlargement, increasing diversity, expanding scope, budgetary pressures, the quest for good governance and an awareness of the CFP as a failing system – have encountered powerful forces for conservatism both within the legal structures of the EU and the development of the CFP itself which discourage transformational change. The paper traces the history of regionalisation up to its inclusion in the 2012 reform agenda and explores alternative forms of regionalising EU fisheries management and some of the key issues surrounding the successful completion of the project. Regionalising the CFP is seen not as an end in itself but as a means of repairing its damaged reputation and securing the effective delivery of the Policy's objectives.