PrimeFish joined policy makers and members of advisory bodies linked to the Blue Growth strategy in the workshop “Aligning the PrimeFish Contributions to the Blue Growth Strategy” held on Brussels on the 25^th of October. After more than 35 meetings with stakeholders and presentations at trade fairs, the project was ready to present its catalogue of results and to spot opportunities to bring evidences to the European policy arena with the aim of building policy recommendations.  

Representatives of the DG Research and Innovation, DG Mare, the Research Executive Agency, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Standing Committee on Agricultural Research on Fish (SCAR) and the Market Advisory Council explored possible ways to use the outputs of PrimeFish in policy initiatives. For instance, the European Market Observatory for Fisheries and Aquaculture Products (EUMOFA), the European initiative exploring ecolabels as market access requirements, and the consultation on EU marketing standards for fishery and aquaculture products were suggested as possible initiatives to make the most of evidences generated by the project.

The workshop took a glance at a number of PrimeFish outputs, in particular, a new index to measure competitiveness in the seafood sector, voluntary labelling in the seafood sector, effects of negative press on consumption, impact of seafood consumption on consumer’s health, and market analysis. The session also hosted an interactive dynamic with which participants suggested possible ways to incorporate PrimeFish results to their lines of action.

PrimeFish is holding a programme of webinars to present the results of the project and the developed tool to the public. PrimeFish will end in 2019 with an international conference that will take place in Vigo (Spain).

Main conclusions are conveyed in the following summary:

PrimeFish Blue Growth Workshop Summary