EU fish subsidy data lacking

However, the project’s co-founders have sounded a grave warning about the deteriorating quality of data released to the public, and the implications of this “waste, fraud and abuse of EU funds”.

Nils Mulvad, the Danish data journalist and fishsubsidy.org co-founder who led the collection of data from the 27 EU member states has said that many governments are not complying with EU transparency laws, and some governments do not publish any data at all, while others publishing incomplete data in “bad formats”.

Fishsubsidy.org co-founder Jack Thurston added that, despite the new European Transparency Initiative, less information on EU fish subsidy payments is available than in previous years. He asked the question, “are EU funds are being used to fish for over-exploited fish stocks, or perhaps worse, for criminal fishing operations? We just don’t know.”

He added that neither does the Commission, as the Commission itself has not asked for this data from national governments.

A transparency index evaluates the data published by member states for completeness, details and accessibility. It shows which countries are doing better and which doing badly. The ranking is topped by Sweden. Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia and the UK score relatively highly, though with significant deficiencies.

The worst performers were Greece and Portugal, which appear to have published no data at all, despite spending a significant share of EU fisheries funds. Spain, which accounts for some 40% of fisheries subsidies spending, scored just 48% in the transparency ranking.