European tuna vessels have secured guaranteed access to some of the Indian Ocean’s richest fishing grounds under a new fisheries deal signed this week, cementing one of the bloc’s longest-running partnerships in the region.

The Fisheries Commissioner, Costas Kadis, and the Seychelles minister for fisheries, agriculture and the blue economy, Wallace Cosgrow, put their names to a Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement on 27 July in the Belgian capital. The protocol runs for four years and lets EU boats, mostly Spanish and French tuna seiners, fish up to 55,000 tonnes of tuna and other migratory species each year in Seychelles waters.

Money sits at the heart of the arrangement. The Union will pay 23 million euros over the four years, and of that sum three million euros are ring-fenced to support the sustainable development of the Seychelles fishing sector. That earmarked funding backs local monitoring, science and coastal livelihoods rather than simply buying access, a model the Commission has pushed as the standard for its external fisheries agreements.

The deal matters well beyond the two signatories. Seychelles hosts Port Victoria, one of the busiest tuna transhipment hubs in the Indian Ocean, and the catch feeds canneries and markets that stretch back into Europe. Stable access helps a fleet that supplies a large share of the tuna sold across the continent, while the payments give a small island state a steady revenue stream tied to its most valuable natural resource.

Officials framed the agreement as proof that commercial fishing and conservation can share the same document. The protocol commits both sides to science-based catch limits and tighter controls on how and where vessels operate, echoing the sustainability language running through the Union’s wider ocean agenda. The Commission set out the terms in its statement on the signing.

Critics of distant-water fishing will watch the enforcement closely. Agreements of this kind live or die on whether observers, catch reporting and port checks actually hold, and campaigners have long warned that migratory tuna stocks can slide if quotas outpace the science. Backers counter that a transparent EU deal, with published limits and earmarked funds, beats the unregulated fishing that fills the gap when such pacts lapse.

The signing also fits a broader push in the Belgian capital to tie Europe’s fishing footprint abroad to firmer environmental rules at home, as the Commission consults on a planned Ocean Act meant to knit together the bloc’s scattered maritime policies. Officials cast the Seychelles protocol as a working example of that approach rather than a one-off transaction.

For now, both governments have what they wanted: predictable access for Europe’s fleet and predictable income for Seychelles, locked in until 2030.