Submission of statistical data on landings of fishery products in Member States

The Commission presents a report on the application of Regulation (EC) No 1921/2006 on the submission of statistical data on landings of fishery products in Member States (Landings Regulation).

The report is based on (i) the quality reports on landings submitted by the reporting Member States to Eurostat for the reference year 2016, (ii) compliance analysis and (iii) cost data collected by Eurostat. The statistics on the volumes and prices of the fishery products landed on EU territory contribute to the Commission’s commitments on market intelligence. The data are essential for following up and analysing the EU fishery product markets along the supply chain. They could also be relevant in the context of the landing obligation6 requiring all catches of regulated commercial species to be landed and counted against the relevant quota.

Main findings

In recent years statistics on landings have improved in terms of punctuality, completeness and consistency. Member States provide reliable information on the volume and value of fishery products landed in the EU and very useful detailed data at species level to be used for analysing the EU fish market. Eurostat reporting guidelines have helped make the data on landings more consistent. In parallel, measures taken by national data providers resulted in a better completeness and punctuality

Burden and cost-effectiveness

Half of the reporting Member States claimed that they made gains in efficiency since the last report. One third of them stated that they managed to reduce the burden on respondents by using more user-friendly questionnaires or easier data transmission methods. The European Statistical System carried out a burden and cost analysis of the process involved in collecting data to provide European statistics. Some 17 Member States (out of 23 which report statistics on landings) sent figures regarding burden, which were expressed in full time equivalent (FTE). In addition, for the three Member States that could only provide a total figure for statistics on both fishery catch and landings, the burden for landings was estimated to account for roughly half of the total. The burden ranged from 0.01 to 11 FTE and was less than 0.25 FTE for half of those Member States who reported figures on burden. Some 17 countries sent figures that included direct and indirect costs. For the two Member States that could not distinguish between costs for collecting data on catch and collecting data on landings, the cost was estimated to account for roughly half of the total. The average annual cost for collecting statistical data on national landings was approximately EUR 109 000 per country. If compared to the total value of landings, the total cost of collecting data on landings was 0.08 % of the total value of landings.

The Commission is committed to reducing the burden on Member States and respondents. To this end, it has included in its 2018 work programme a project on streamlining and simplifying statistics on fisheries. This project includes an evaluation of the statistics on fisheries (catches, landings and aquaculture) that Eurostat currently collect. The evaluation will be carried out in the overall context of fisheries data collected by other Commission DGs and international organisations. It will contribute to a strategy that aims to make fishery statistics collected by Eurostat fitter for purpose. The evaluation will be completed in the summer of 2019.

Recommendations

The Commission makes the following recommendations:

- at national level countries should further encourage the use of electronic questionnaires, as it helps make the data collection more efficient;

- a systematic procedure for cross-checking with other national data would ensure better data consistency;

- the automation of validation checks would also increase the reliability of the data.