Regional Coordination Group on Economic Issues - 2022 - Report

The Regional Coordination Group on Economic Issues (RCG ECON) was established in 2021 as an expert group to assist the Commission in the implementation of the (DCF) Data Collection Framework concerning the collection, management and use of data in the fisheries sector and support for scientific advice regarding the Common Fisheries Policy. This was the second annual RCG ECON meeting organised. The RCG ECON 2022 meeting was held from 4th to 6th May online with application of the ZOOM virtual meeting platform, with 53 experts (Annex I) representing 23 Member States, Joint Research Centre, DG MARE and ICES. The meeting agenda started with presenting the level of ambition for regional coordination of economic and social data collection developed under the Fishn’Co project. In the RCG ECON 2021 meeting, the group proposed that Fishn’Co project would develop and circulate a questionnaire among member states about potential data collection issues that could be solved by increased international cooperation. The questionnaire included a list of possible issues about Capital costs and Capital value estimations. RCG ECON facilitated the communication with NCs and the Fishn’Co project to get replies and feedback. The feedback and results from this survey/questionnaire was presented to the group. Based on the replies from the member states, further international cooperation is needed in relation to combination of data on small segments, estimation of employment data for foreign crew, valuation of vessel capacity and social data collected outside the DCF. Feedback from the two workshops both organised as virtual meetings in 2022 were presented to the group. Recent workshops included an alternative approach to the segmentation of fishing fleets and a workshop on aquaculture. The group discussed if the new alternative way for fleet segmentation based on fisheries/stocks would be more valuable than the operative one stated in the current legislation as for some member states the current segmentation is not sufficient. The work on alternative segmentation continues with a new workshop in autumn 2022. If an alternative segmentation would be used for reporting in the future, a set of rules for setting up the clusters would need to be created to ensure that segments are comparable between member states over time. The aquaculture workshop discussed how the data submission and correction process can be streamlined with the help of JRC to have more time in the STECF aquaculture EWG meetings to prepare the EU overviews and special chapters with a deeper economic analysis. The group also drafted recommendations in regard reviewing the definitions and guidelines, nowcasting and reporting environmental variables. Issues related to the work plan implementation and data transmission were discussed. For reporting the fishing activity variables, it was recommended to submit fishing activity data in one data call (FDI) instead of current two data calls (fleet economic and FDI) to reduce double reporting and the workload for data calls. The group clarified that COVID payments should be provided under the variable ‘Operating subsidies’ and not to be combined with ‘Other income’. The group agreed that segment clusters should be consistent in time. The member states should apply clustering based on Geo-indicator and Fishery and clustered segments should be in line with the National Work Plan (NWP). Although reporting fish processing variables is not mandatory in the new EUMAP, 16 member states have planned an annual data collection in their National Work Plans. To improve the homogeneous approach to fish processing data collection also in the future, a workshop on fish processing data collection was recommended to discuss definitions, nowcast, challenges identifying the frame population and reporting raw materials. The group also discussed that the quality of methodology for the data collection should be evaluated, in addition to the evaluation done in EWG Work Plan evaluation meetings on the comparability and compliance of NWP Annex 1.2. The draft regional work plan prepared by the Fishn’Co project was introduced to the group. The draft regional work plan includes current guidelines, definitions, methodology and statistical Handbook which are available online (https://datacollection.jrc.ec.europa.eu/guidelines/socio-economic-variables). The group agreed that the regional work plan needs to be developed further with the help of experts from all member states. The chairs of RCG ECON send out draft guidelines to the national correspondents highlighting methodologies and definitions which need further discussion and collect comments from member states. RCG ISSG on regional work plan will be organised to finalize the pan-regional work plan for economic and social data collection. A comparative analysis carried out in Fishn’Co project on capital value and capital cost estimation and inventory of issues with PIM was presented. The group agreed that methodology and assumptions used when applying the PIM method should be described in the national work plans in Annex 1.2. and the guidelines for drafting the national work plans should be improved. In a workshop on capital valuation, member states should share their approaches on perpetual inventory method and expertise reached so far in order to ensure homogeneity in the estimation among similar regional fleet segments. In addition, the valuation of fishing rights needs further discussion to ensure homogeneity in reporting and to form a common understanding of the current guidelines. The current work in the Fishn’Co project on the data available for national profiles collected outside the EUMAP was also introduced and the work continues until the end of 2022. Finally, the updates from the SecWeb project were presented about the supporting administrative tasks and online visibility of the RCGs. The RCG ECON 2022 justifications and recommendations in relation to all issues mentioned above can be found in section three of the report, as well as the detailed description and objectives provided in section six.