Funds for the fisheries and aquaculture sector focus on sustainability

The commitment to developing fishing and aquaculture methods, throughout the entire value chain, with a lower impact on seas and oceans usually entails an added cost, which for some companies is unaffordable. Therefore, administrations offer funds to mitigate these costs every year and encourage implementation of initiatives as per any of the targets of SDG 14, Life Below Water.

In the Basque Country, the Basque Government published a number of subsidies for the fisheries and aquaculture sector amounting to 14.8 million Euros at the end of 2021. 11.1 million Euros are from the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund and 3.7 million Euros from the Autonomous Community budgets. Further, 6,457,000 Euros are payment appropriations for 2022. Many professionals and bodies (natural and legal persons, fishermen´s guilds and scientific or technical agencies) are the potential beneficiaries of these funds.

The subsidy catalogue envisaged for this year (the deadline for submitting applications is 30th June) includes diverse aspects such as: mitigating the impact of fishing, innovation in the conservation of marine biological resources, waste collection from the sea as well as engine replacement or upgrade, among many other aspects.

Ministry of Fisheries

Furthermore, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has also launched a call to apply for subsidies this year and the next aimed at public or private clusters which undertake Blue Growth projects in the fisheries and aquaculture sector under the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

With these subsidies – amounting to two million Euros, one per year – the bodies can finance projects involving modernisation, upgrading and sustainable improvement of the aforementioned sectors, including the entire processing and marketing chain for their products, likewise their competitiveness and productivity.