The European Union’s fishing access agreements in developing countries have been widely criticized and are often associated with poor transparency, inequitable benefit sharing, conflicts with small-scale fishermen and depletion of fish stocks. But the agreements could also encourage local landings of fish and promote a domestic processing industry with possibilities to export.

So far, there is little evidence of the net-benefits of fishery access agreements on the economies of developing countries. The aim of this paper is to contribute to filling this gap by investigating the effects of the European Union’s fishing access agreements on African countries’ exports. More specifically, the effects of terminating fishing access agreement on the extensive and intensive margin of trade is investigated.

The project is finalised in spring 2019.