The annual technical meeting of the Regional Coordination Group on Economic Issues (RCG ECON) was held from 3 to 6 June 2024 in Athens, Greece in a hybrid format. The meeting was followed by 73 participants, including national experts from 23 Member States (MS), Joint Research Center, DG MARE and ICES.
The group reviewed the intersessional progress made on topics such as the evaluation of Quality Assurance Framework, and the FDI (Fisheries Dependant Information) and AER (Annual Economic Report) data calls. Besides, other methodological issues on the collection of social and economic data were discussed, such as: the collection of data on fuel/energy consumption, the methods to evaluate the physical capital, and the new developments in the area of social data.
The ISSG on Developing Quality Assessment System evaluated the current Data Collection Framework (DCF) quality reporting elements and made a comparison with the European Statistical System (ESS) handbook for quality report and the ESS Reference Metadata Reporting Standards. The way forward to improve the quality reporting it is to make an assessment, with the collaboration from Eurostat, of the quality reporting information on the aquaculture data collection as a basis for further work. The ISSG full report can be found here.
The workshop on harmonizing the AER and FDI datasets showed inconsistencies between the two datasets in numerous countries; specifically in the number of fleet segments, vessels, effort, and landing weight and value. The workshop proved to be a good exercise to exchange knowledge and good practices among MS. Next year an evaluation of the outstanding discrepancies between the datasets will be carried out in the frame of the FDI methodological Expert Working Group (EWG).
The evaluation of the current status of the collection of data on fuel/energy consumption revealed a wide variety in the detail in which data on fuel/energy consumption is gathered and the potential for RCG ECON to improve the methodologies by developing guidelines for data gathering, processing and quality reporting.
RCG ECON also discussed the new developments in the area of social data to support the social dimension of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). RCG ECON will organize a dedicated meeting on Exploring new methods for data collection for new social variables in mid Sep, in time for MS to include potential pilots in their National Work Plans.
The group was updated by the focal point from the EU-Commission on the developments relevant to the data collection, namely: the Regional and National Work Plans 2025-2027, the DCF IT platform, the DTMT, Data requests, SAF grant projects and the Control Regulation.
All the details about the Meeting are available in RCG ECON annual report. For more information please visit: https://www.fisheries-rcg.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Report_RCG-ECON_TM-2024_final_2024_09_08.pdf