Creating External Impacts: the Case of IUU Regulation and the EU Yellow Card Policy Conditionality
Creating External Impacts: the Case of IUU Regulation and the EU Yellow Card Policy Conditionality

Summary/Abstract: RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: This exploratory article examines policy instruments created by the EU that aim to contribute to marine resources sustainability. Taking as an example the IUU Regulation, the article identifies the conditions of their effective implementation and shows that these instruments create the chain of policy conditionality. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has been created to manage pooled marine resources, but increasingly serves also to generate external policy effects. The main instrument of external policy is the IUU Regulation and fisheries yellow card conditionality. The article analyzes how this instrument is deployed and identifies main conditions of its effectiveness by using secondary qualitative data. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: Recognizing that marine living resources are global common resources whose sustainability is at stake due to overfishing, pollution and climate change, the article discusses the evolution of CFP instruments and especially the IUU regulation. Then, it examines the principal elements and conditions for IUU effectiveness and the mechanism of policy conditionality. The article shows how IUU conditionality operates, balancing policy dialogue and commercial threats. RESEARCH RESULTS: The article shows that policy conditionality is a slow but potentially effective instrument to influence fishing practices of a partner country. This instrument gains on weight thanks to shadow commercial threats that can be implemented, if a warned country does not show willingness to cooperate. The argumentation demonstrates that the effectiveness of policy cooperation requires deep knowledge of partner’s domestic administrative system and transparency in result oriented policy dialogue. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Policy conditionality is a way the EU promotes global sustainability objectives. Effective deployment of this instrument requires result oriented policy interactions with third countries. The EU should keep examining the implementation of IUU Yellow Card to improve its implementation and increase the likelihood of achieving expected results.

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