Libreville, Wednesday 23 September 2026 – Gabon and the European Union are about to reopen a file that goes far beyond the simple question of European vessels’ access to Gabonese waters. After the end of the previous partnership, Libreville now wants to redefine the economic, industrial and operational terms of a cooperation meant to frame the exploitation of its fishery resources.

On 18 September, the Gabonese government gave the green light to open negotiations for a new Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement and its implementing protocol.

This resumption of dialogue comes more than a year after Gabon denounced the previous agreement on 4 June 2025. With its protocol having expired on 28 June 2026, the European arrangement is now considered suspended. EU vessels no longer have a framework allowing them to fish in Gabonese waters. The former exclusivity clause also prevents bypassing this situation through simple individual authorisations.

For Libreville, the next negotiation is therefore an opportunity to review the balances of a partnership whose local economic spin-offs have appeared limited compared with the potential of the resources concerned.

A financial model that needs rethinking

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 European Union paid €1.6 million per year for access to resources, to which was added an annual envelope of €1 million intended for sector development.

Yet the results observed were far below the theoretical capacities used. Between 2022 and 2024, European vessels caught an average of 10,604 tonnes per year. Of the 27 authorisations planned for purse seiners, only 54% were used on average. The six licences reserved for pole-and-line tuna vessels were never used at all.

This gap between theoretically opened rights and actual use of resources should logically weigh on the next architecture of the partnership. The number of vessels, the price of access per tonne and the methods for calculating the European contribution are among the parameters likely to be renegotiated.

But the central issue probably lies elsewhere, in Gabon’s ability to turn a fishing activity into genuine local economic value.

From access to waters to value creation

The previous protocol provided that at least 30% of catches could be transhipped in a Gabonese port, subject to acceptable economic and commercial conditions. When a vessel carried out a transhipment in Gabon, its by-catches also had to be fully landed there.

In practice, these provisions were little used. European vessels rarely 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, compared with 47% benefiting other actors, notably in Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal, through port activities, on-board jobs and processing.

The next agreement will therefore have to determine whether Gabon intends simply to continue monetising access to its resource or to seek to build around it a value chain more firmly established on its territory. The question of landings, port infrastructure, processing and national employment thus becomes as important as the amount of financial compensation.

Financing the sector is another potential sticking point. Of the €5 million in sectoral support planned over five years, only €2 million had been transferred at the time of the assessment carried out 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

The negotiations will also have to correct several technical weaknesses. The previous arrangement provided for the embarkation of qualified Gabonese sailors, but no list meeting the required criteria had been transmitted to European shipowners. The compensation planned in the event of non-embarkation was therefore not applied.

Catch monitoring will also need to be strengthened. The electronic reporting system was not fully operational and differences in method between the two parties had produced discrepancies in the available data. Under these conditions, transparency on the volumes actually fished becomes a determining factor in assessing the value of the partnership.

The European assessment notably recommends reconsidering the six licences never used for pole-and-line tuna vessels and adapting the number of authorisations intended for purse seiners.

The next negotiation will therefore not only concern an amount paid by Brussels in exchange for access to Gabonese waters. It will have to determine the conditions of a partnership where each tonne fished can be associated with identifiable spin-offs for the Gabonese economy, in terms of revenue, jobs, landings, processing and infrastructure development.

For both Libreville and Brussels, the challenge is now 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, the renegotiation thus opens an important sequence in which fishery resources become not only a question of access, but a potential instrument of economic sovereignty and local value creation.