After a seemingly endless wait of more than four years, French justice has finally ruled in favour of the Union of Small-Scale Fishers from the Occitan Region (Syndicat professionnel des pêcheurs petits métiers d’Occitanie (SPMO)). A class action was brought by the SPMO and three other stakeholders¹ (CDPMEM du Var, Prud’homie de la Ciotat and Plate-forme de la petite pêche artisanale française). The LIFE platform (Low Impact Fishers of Europe) gave financial and moral support to this procedure to ensure that the concerns of other EU small-scale low impact fishers were represented, facing as they do similar difficulties of access to fishing rights.

The case is important because the judge’s ruling from the hearing at the Administrative Court of Montpellier has implications for how fishing quotas are allocated not only in France, but in the wider EU. A key issue highlighted by the judge is that the Bluefin tuna quota allocation mechanism falls short of requisite European standards, is neither transparent nor objective, and fails to take proper account of Article 17.

The action was bought by the small-scale low impact fishers to challenge the way the allocation of national quota is done in France, and to replace it with a more equitable system. Such a system should ensure a wider distribution of quota to benefit the small-scale fishers who exert the least fishing effort but who receive a minimal allocation or are excluded altogether. At the preliminary hearing on 17 June 2021, the Clerk of the Tribunal made particularly strong and substantiated submissions in favour of the Applicants (the small-scale fishers). His analysis clearly informed the decision of the judges, who confirmed, on 15 July 2021, the annulment of the 2017 order allocating the bluefin tuna quota.