Participatory practices in fisheries across Europe: Making stakeholders more responsible

Drawing on an EU-funded project titled “Sharing responsibilities in fisheries management” this paper assesses the institutional landscape of fisheries management in a number of European countries, with a particular emphasis on stakeholder involvement in regulatory decision-making. What are their roles and responsibilities in the chain of governance? What are the specific characteristics of each country, and what is similar and what is different as compared with other sectors? Although there is a move towards devolvement and decentralisation in some European countries, there is quite an ambivalence regarding such reforms in other countries. These differences in stakeholder involvement are partly a result of institutional traditions within each country, but also a reflection of how management authorities struggle with the dilemmas pertaining to such reforms of participatory practices. Thus, we argue that even within a reformed fisheries management system that allows greater participation of stakeholder groups, there can hardly be one European model that fits all.