Meeting to discuss Economics and Social Science in Fisheries

Event update on Work Package 4

WP4 aims at developing a state-of-art summary overview of research on economics and other social sciences in fisheries. A high level statement on future needs in this area will be formulated on the basis of this overview.

In order to obtain views from the main research institutes in Europe a meeting of these institutes was held at LEI in The Hague on 23rd-24th November 2006.

The meeting was attended by the following institutes:

• FOI (Dk)
• Ifremer  (Fr)
• Seafish (UK)
• Cemare (UK)
• Irepa (It)
• Univ. of Tromso (No)
• LEI (Nl)

These institutes were invited on the basis of the size of their permanent staff and their track record, particularly in relation to EU research.

The objective of the meeting was to discuss the present status of research on fisheries in economics and social sciences and to explore the possibilities of intensified cooperation between participants of the meeting.

The meeting has achieved several specific results:

• A ‘Note on status, role and outlook of socio-economic research on fisheries’ was prepared, endorsed and will be used / distributed by the participating organizations in their contact with the national authorities. The Note was also sent to the Economics Unit of DG Fisheries.
• It was agreed that an ‘Anticipation process’ needs to be initiated in order to make research results available in time to be exploited by policy makers.
• The possibilities of intensification of co-operation between the invited institutes will be further discussed during a follow-up meeting in Brussels on 12th-13th February 2007. MariFish hopes that the involved institutes will continue to co-operate autonomously after this meeting.
• The meeting has provided important input into the preparation of the State-of-art paper, which is will be completed by the end of January 2007 and to the accompanying High level statement.

The State-of-art paper and the High level statement will be discussed during a virtual workshop in February / March 2007. Final discussion and endorsement of both documents will be held during the WPMG meeting in April 2007.