Libreville, Wednesday, September 23, 2026 – Gabon is making a decisive move to reshape its fisheries partnership with the European Union, going beyond the simple question of access for European vessels. After the previous deal lapsed, Libreville is now determined to rewrite the economic, industrial, and operational terms of a cooperation that governs the exploitation of its marine resources.

On September 18, the Gabonese government approved the launch of negotiations for a new Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement and its implementing protocol.

This resumption of talks 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 arrangement is now considered suspended. EU vessels no longer have a framework allowing them to fish in Gabonese waters. The old exclusivity clause also prevents circumventing this situation through simple individual authorizations.

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

A financial model under scrutiny

The first issue 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 EU paid €1.6 million per year for access to resources, plus an annual envelope of €1 million for sector development.

Yet the observed 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 utilized.

This gap between theoretically opened rights and actual use of resources should logically influence 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 central challenge probably lies elsewhere—in Gabon’s ability to transform fishing activity into genuine local economic value.

From water access 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 assessment estimates that Gabon captured only 23% of the added value generated by the arrangement, while 47% benefited other actors, notably 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 issues of landings, port infrastructure, processing, and national employment thus become as important as the amount of financial compensation.

Sector financing is another potential friction 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

Negotiations must also correct several technical weaknesses. The previous arrangement provided for the embarkation of qualified Gabonese sailors, but no list meeting the required criteria had been sent to European shipowners. The compensation provided for in case of non-embarkation was therefore not applied.

Catch monitoring must also be strengthened. The electronic reporting system was not fully operational, and differences in methodology between the two parties had produced discrepancies in the available data. Under these conditions, transparency on actual volumes fished 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 focus solely on 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, this renegotiation opens a critical phase in which marine resources become not only a matter of access but a potential instrument of economic sovereignty and local value creation.