Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
The European Union has pledged €1 million to the fisheries financing mechanism that forms part of the World Trade Organization's agreement to support fisheries reached last year. The new fisheries financing mechanism, established in November 2022, aims to support sustainability in fisheries and eliminate harmful subsidies to fisheries.
  Grants will be provided to developing and least developed countries so that they can benefit from technical assistance and capacity building for the implementation of the WTO Agreement on Fisheries Support.

These grants will supplement and benefit from other existing assistance available for sustainable fisheries. This was stated by Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis in Davos, on the occasion of his meeting with the Director General of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

The WTO Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies reached at the Twelfth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization in June 2022 introduced meaningful new rules that clamp down on subsidies that lead to overfishing.
It is the first multilateral WTO agreement to support sustainability.

For the agreement to enter into force, two-thirds of WTO members must notify the WTO of their acceptance of it. Negotiations are also underway at the WTO on outstanding issues on fisheries subsidies, including further strengthening of the agreement.