Recommendations for the operational stabilisation and strategic alignment of CATCH
The Market Advisory Council (MAC) delivered recommendations to the European Commission calling for operational stabilisation and strategic alignment of CATCH with the aim of ensuring proportionality, legal certainty, and market stability. On 10 January 2026, under the EU’s legislative framework against illegal, unregulated, and undocumented (IUU) fishing), the new IT tool entered into force to streamline checks and verifications of catch certificates for fishery products entering the EU market.
The MAC welcomed CATCH as an important step towards strengthening the effectiveness and consistency of import controls within the Union, as the new tool creates a significant opportunity to align digital information when handling imports. At the same time, Food Business Operators have identified recurring operational, technical and administrative challenges arising during the early implementation phase, particularly affecting supply chains dependent on time-sensitive imports and complex sourcing structures. Operators have identified significant administrative burden due to the manual transcription of third-country documentation into CATCH, various technical limitations, increased delays and operational costs linked to clearance procedures, and divergences in implementation practices and operational readiness across Member States.
In the view of the MAC members, to ensure the long-term success of CATCH, the following should take place:
- Provision of additional harmonised guidance, including clarification on the application of requirements in cases affected by transitional, technical, or administrative errors.
- Strengthened coordination between the European Commission, Member States, and the Single Liaison Offices, including via regular technical exchanges and identification of operational issues, while also encouraging adequate staffing and resources.
- Remediation of operational shortcomings identified by operators and authorities, such as missing master data, restrictive validation rules, and alignment of gear classification codes, while also providing structured channels for reporting operational issues.
- Support for the progressive development of full system-to-system interoperability, to reduce duplicate data entry, improve administrative efficiency, and facilitate the handling of complex documentation.
- Structured bilateral technical exchanges with relevant third countries and regional authorities, to facilitate interoperability, improve mutual understanding of traceability architectures, and support workable digital integration pathways.
- Introduction of operational functionalities enabling delegated actions within CATCH to allow authorised representatives, including customs agents, freight forwarders and Producer Organisations, to perform specific tasks on behalf of operators.
- In the case of future major technical upgrades or developments, structured and time-bound operational testing involving representative operators and a range of supply-chain configurations.
Yobana Bermúdez, Chair of the MAC, emphasised: “The EU fisheries value chain is highly integrated and dependent on stable logistics and predicable import procedures. Through the digitalisation and streamlining of data, CATCH can be a key tool to reinforce the fight against the presence of IUU products in the EU market. Nevertheless, the long-term credibility and effectiveness of the new tool depend not only on the robustness of controls, but also on the practical usability and reliability of the system for authorities and operators, including SMEs, alike. The administrative and financial burden on operators, the current technical limitations, and the diverging national implementations must be addressed as soon as possible, including via strengthened interoperability and an increased involvement of the relevant third countries”.
