Libreville, Wednesday, September 23, 2026 – The Gabonese government’s decision to reopen fisheries negotiations with the European Union has triggered widespread reactions and raised a central question: what will change for a sector that many believe has yet to deliver on its promises? After the previous partnership ended, Libreville is now seeking to reshape the economic, industrial, and operational terms of a cooperation that will govern the exploitation of its marine resources.

On September 18, the Gabonese government gave the green light to open negotiations for a new Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement and its implementing protocol.

This resumption of dialogue comes more than a year after Gabon denounced the previous agreement on June 4, 2025. With its protocol having expired on June 28, 2026, the European framework is now considered suspended. EU vessels no longer have a legal basis to fish in Gabonese waters. The old exclusivity clause also prevents bypassing this situation through simple individual authorizations.

For Libreville, the upcoming negotiation is an opportunity to rebalance a partnership whose local economic benefits have appeared limited compared to the potential of the resources involved.

A financial model under scrutiny

The first topic will inevitably be financial. The previous protocol was based on a reference capacity of 32,000 tonnes used to calculate the European contribution, without guaranteeing that volume of catches. The European Union paid €1.6 million per year for access to the resources, plus an annual envelope of €1 million for sector development.

However, actual results fell far short of the theoretical capacities. Between 2022 and 2024, European vessels caught an average of 10,604 tonnes per year. Of the 27 authorizations planned for purse seine tuna vessels, only 54% were used on average. The six licenses reserved for pole-and-line tuna vessels were never used.

This gap between theoretically open rights and actual use of resources should logically weigh on the next architecture of the partnership. The number of vessels, the price per tonne of access, and the methods for calculating the European contribution are among the parameters likely to be renegotiated.

But the core issue probably lies elsewhere: in Gabon’s ability to turn fishing activity into real local economic value.

From access to waters to value creation

The previous protocol stipulated that at least 30% of catches could be transshipped in a Gabonese port, subject to acceptable economic and commercial conditions. When a vessel transshipped in Gabon, its by-catches also had to be fully landed there.

In practice, these provisions were rarely used. European vessels seldom frequented Gabonese port infrastructure, and their catches were mainly landed and processed in Côte d’Ivoire. The European evaluation estimates that Gabon captured only 23% of the added value generated by the scheme, while 47% benefited other actors, particularly in Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal, through port activities, onboard jobs, and processing.

The next agreement must therefore determine whether Gabon intends simply to continue monetizing access to its resource or to build a value chain more firmly rooted in its territory. The question of landings, port infrastructure, processing, and national employment thus becomes as important as the amount of financial compensation.

Sector financing is another potential sticking point. Of the €5 million in sectoral support planned over five years, only €2 million had been transferred at the time of the evaluation conducted between December 2024 and May 2025. Just over 20% of the multi-year envelope had been consumed. Some infrastructure remained unfinished, while the indicators used measured the delivery of outputs rather than their real economic effects.

The next agreement must be measurable

Finally, the negotiations will need to correct several technical weaknesses. The previous scheme provided for the embarkation of qualified Gabonese sailors, but no list meeting the required criteria had been sent to European shipowners. The compensation planned for non-embarkation was therefore not applied.

Catch monitoring must also be strengthened. The electronic reporting system was not fully operational, and differences in method between the two parties had produced discrepancies in available data. Under these conditions, transparency of actual fishing volumes becomes a determining factor in assessing the value of the partnership.

The European evaluation recommends reconsidering the six never-used licenses for pole-and-line tuna vessels and adjusting the number of authorizations for purse seiners.

The next negotiation will therefore not be solely about an amount paid by Brussels in exchange for access to Gabonese waters. It must determine the conditions of a partnership where every tonne fished can be linked to identifiable benefits for the Gabonese economy, in terms of revenue, jobs, landings, processing, and infrastructure development.

For both Libreville and Brussels, the challenge now is to draw the consequences of the previous agreement. The future partnership will be judged less on its theoretical commitments than on its ability to produce verifiable results. For Gabon, the renegotiation thus opens an important sequence in which marine resources become not only a question of access but a potential instrument of economic sovereignty and local value creation.

FIN/INFOSGABON/SO/2026

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