Sustainable development of rural coastal areas: Impacts of a new fisheries policy

In most EU coastal areas, over the last two decades, a significant employment and income shrink was observed; this was attributed to a gradual decline of fishery activities. Hence, the EU, in an attempt to restrain this decline and to safeguard a sustainable development of the coastal areas, initiated new measures within the current (2007-2013) Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). This work attempts to assess the effectiveness of this new policy, Axis 4 of the Operational Fisheries Programme, by measuring the employment and income effects upon the whole economy. The analysis was applied in a Greek coastal area as a case study. Results demonstrate that the employment and income generated, due to those measures, are relatively small mainly because of fund limitations and weak interactions in the local economy in a short-run timeline, though indirect benefits could occur in the long run.