Vigo: At Europe’s busiest fishing port, every crate of imported cod and tuna now carries a longer paper trail, as the bloc tightens the screws on illegal fishing at its borders.

Since January, a new digital catch certificate system has governed fishery products entering the European Union, replacing a patchwork of paper documents that were easy to forge and hard to cross-check. The Commission rolled out the platform to close the gaps that let illegally caught fish slip onto European plates.

The scale explains the urgency. Imports cover about 70% of the seafood Europeans eat, and roughly 80% of those imports fall under the bloc’s rules against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. A single traceable record for each consignment, the Commission argues, makes it far harder to launder illicit catch through legitimate supply chains.

The certificate system sits alongside the EU’s older and blunter instrument, the carding scheme. Under rules in force since 2010, Brussels can open a dialogue with a country that fails to police its fleets, escalate to a formal ‘yellow card’ warning, and ultimately issue a ‘red card’ that bars that nation’s seafood from the European market.

That leverage has teeth because the EU is one of the world’s largest seafood buyers. Faced with the threat of losing access, several countries have overhauled their fisheries laws, tightened vessel registers and improved monitoring rather than risk a ban. The Commission sets out the mechanics on its illegal fishing pages.

Campaigners still see holes. Watchdog groups warn that lax vessel registration lets operators reflag ships to dodge scrutiny, and that the carding process can move slowly and unevenly. They want faster decisions and tighter checks on where a boat is really based.

The reflagging loophole most frustrates enforcement experts. An operator whose home country faces a red card can move a vessel onto the register of a more permissive state, then land the catch through a third country whose paperwork the EU still accepts. The digital certificate only closes that gap if inspectors can trace a consignment back through every transfer to the boat that caught it, which demands data-sharing many exporting states have yet to deliver.

For European fishers, the appeal is partly commercial. Crews who play by strict quota and reporting rules have long complained about competing against cheaper imports landed with little oversight. A firmer traceability regime promises a more level field, details of which the Commission published when it launched the digital system.

The real test is enforcement. A digital certificate is only as good as the inspectors and data behind it, and criminal networks adapt quickly. But by pushing the paperwork online and backing it with the market power of half a billion consumers, Europe is betting it can make illegal fishing a losing trade.