FisheriesSubsidiesRulesattheWTO

Fisheries Subsidies Rules at the WTO: A Compilation of Evidence and Analysis

9 April 2018

At the WTO’s Eleventh Ministerial Conference in December 2017, ministers adopted a Decision on Fisheries Subsidies directing negotiators to continue talks with a view to adopting an agreement by 2019, the year of the next ministerial conference. The ministerial decision also specificallyre-commits WTO members to implementing their existing notification obligationsin order to strengthen transparency of the subsidies provided to fishing.Reaching a comprehensive and effective outcome will require solutions that respond to the many technical and legal questions the negotiations have brought up.

The papers in this compilation aim to respond to some of these questions. They cover the law ofthe sea rules relevant to the development of fisheries subsidy disciplines,options for the identification of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU)fishing activities, technical input on the definition and measurement of overfished stocks, small-scale fisheries and shared fish stocks, and ways in which better transparency of fisheries subsidies and an eventual legal outcometo the negotiations could be built into the WTO framework.