Confronting the implementation of marine ecosystem-based management within the Common Fisheries Policy reform

•We analyse the specific measures foreseen in the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).•CFP is moving towards EBM but it does not state clearly at which level it incorporates ecosystem concerns.•Social aspects are not clearly defined in the CFP and compensability is likely to involve this dimension.•We recommend the definition of appropriate objectives and adequate thresholds for the social dimension of fisheries.

This paper confronts, by meta-synthesis of the literature, the definition of ecosystem-based management provided in the reform of the European Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) with the specific measures and the institutional framework foreseen in it.By analysing the reform of the CFP by means of the ecosystem-based management framework, we conclude that there is a lack of instruments to deal with the social sustainability objective while economic and ecological sustainability could be simultaneously achieved with the specific measures considered in the reform.Individually analysed, the specific measures could further benefit ecosystem-based management implementation, although not all the observed or analysed consequences of the implementation of these measures move in this direction. In that sense we conclude that the success of the ecosystem based management of EU fisheries depends much more on the specific implementation of the measures and on the accompanying incentives, which in the end, implies that the institutional and political settings will determine its success.