The European Union (EU) has postponed until the end of Nov. the application of its digital seafood traceability system to some countries, including the United States, which it introduced to stop illegal fishing. The system was designed to block the inflow of illegally caught seafood into Europe, but it was implemented when the digitalization of the seafood supply chain was not fully in place, causing customs delays and increased expense.
According to the Financial Times (FT) on the 12th local time, the EU extended the exemption period for the digital traceability system (CATCH) for U.S. seafood from July 10 to Nov. 30. The decision reportedly followed the U.S. government raising operational issues with the European Commission. The deferral also applies to Canada, Norway, New Zealand, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and South Africa.
CATCH is an electronic certification and traceability system designed to prevent seafood produced through illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing from entering the EU market. It verifies the movement path by submitting related information digitally from catch to export. Since 2010, the EU has tightened crackdowns on illegal fishing and has temporarily banned imports of seafood from six countries to date.
The immediate trigger for the deferral was a customs snag in the Netherlands in May. A vessel carrying Alaska pollock could not submit the traceability information required by CATCH and was unable to enter port for several days, then docked at IJmuiden in the Netherlands only after U.S. authorities intervened. The customs snag spread to another vessel, leaving that ship stuck at the port with cargo for days. The two vessels were carrying 16,000 tons (t) of seafood, including pollock and flatfish.
The Alaska seafood industry in the United States says CATCH is effectively acting as a trade barrier. In particular, some shipments require entering thousands of data points, forcing both exporters and importers to bear considerable expense. In 2025, the United States exported to the EU more than $1 billion (about 1.5 trillion won) in wild-caught seafood, including pollock, salmon, and lobster. With the EU market accounting for a large share, there are concerns that customs delays and higher administrative expense under the new system could increase the burden on the U.S. seafood industry.
The problem is that the level of digitalization in the seafood supply chain has yet to catch up with the system. Much of the supply chain's information is still created and managed on paper, so the final exporter must digitize it again and enter it into the system. In this process, missing data or delayed entry occurs, leading to customs snags. Katarina Sipic, secretary-general of Seafood Europe, a European seafood processing association, said, "The system was introduced without sufficient verification in real market conditions," and noted, "The issues to resolve are not individual technical glitches but structural and systemic challenges."
An EU expert report obtained by the FT also flagged technical limits. The report said a data dictionary, message formats, standard input examples, validation rules, error codes, and access rights are needed. Without such standards in place, the system must rely on manual entry and case-by-case interpretation, making end-to-end digital traceability across the supply chain difficult.
About one-fifth of the world's seafood catch is estimated to be illegal or unreported. According to the EU Alliance to End Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing, annual illegal and unreported catches reach 11 million to 26 million t. That is why the EU is moving to strengthen its seafood traceability system. However, customs snags are occurring as the supply chain's digital transition fails to keep pace with implementation. The FT said that if these problems persist, they could again heighten trade tensions between the United States and the EU.