Improvements in impact assessment for fisheries management. the socioec experience

The main aim of the SOCIOEC project was to assess new management options of the CFP and improve methodology of the Impact Assessment (IA). The project covered several major research areas, affecting decision making process in fisheries: definition of fisheries management objectives, possible incentives and behavior of the sector under different management options, government structure and stakeholder’s involvement, IA of different management options. The analysis covered almost all major EU fishing regions and fisheries, which allowed to take into account the main features of different management options implemented EU-wide. The aim of the paper is to provide a synthetic overview of the major results of the main results of the project and special attention will be given to the improvement of the IA methodology, which following sustainability impact assessment concept in fishery includes not only integrated analysis of three sustainability dimensions, but also “soft†form of analysis and stakeholders involvement as a crucial part of the process. The rating methodology developed under the SOCIOEC provides possibility to assess the results of different policy options in terms of acceptability, effectiveness, coherence and efficiency..