STAKEHOLDERS AND THE REFORM OF THE EUROPEAN UNION'S COMMON FISHERIES POLICY: The Institutionalisation of a Consultation Culture?

The European Union's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has recently undergone a dramatic process of reinvention, or so it would seem. In the two decades, or thereabouts, of its existence much criticism has been levelled at the CFP for its failure to effectively keep pace with changing social, economic and, more particularly, environmental circumstances. A key flaw,identified as contributing to this failure of the policy, was the highly centralised, top-down and coercive nature of the CFP. The recent reform process sought to counter these criticisms by conducting a consultation exercise with fisheries stakeholders regarding the content of the reform package. Informed by insights into stakeholders' perceptions of European management of fisheries gathered through our own consultation conducted in the UK and the Netherlands, this paper applies theoretical conceptualisations of 'stakeholders; and the relationships between them, to the empirical context of the reform of the CFP. Our discussion of the power dynamics between stakeholder groups suggests that the institutionalisation of a consultation culture, via provisions made for Regional Advisory Councils, has not overcome prevailing norms in the CFP.