This article was featured in Eurofish Magazine 3 2025.
The extreme meteorological phenomena recorded in the last ten years in the southeastern part of Europe, primarily manifested by exceptionally high temperatures and repeated droughts, have significantly affected freshwater fish farming in Romania. The drought of the past four years in the main cyprinid production areas, namely the northeast and southeast, has resulted in a dramatic decrease in the production of cyprinids raised in polyculture. The cyprinid production sold in 2015 was 9,070 tonnes, with an additional 1,880 tonnes imported. In 2023, the national sold production was 7,129 tonnes, and another 4,613 tonnes were imported, indicating a slight increase in consumption but a severe crisis in domestic production. As a result of the cascading crises over the last five years, culminating in a lack of access to water sources and an unexpected rise in energy prices, alongside the absence of coherent and consistent measures to maintain the economic viability of the sector, many pond farms—some of which are highly productive—are on the brink of dereliction, affecting also the biodiversity associated with this type of aquaculture.
The Romanian aquaculture producers’ organisations are questioning the inadequate response of both the European Commission and national authorities in addressing such events in aquaculture compared to the support consistently allocated to other forms of agriculture. This is especially galling when aquaculture production in the EU, as in Romania, has remained stagnant since 2000, leading to an increasing dependence on imports. Professional organisations in aquaculture proposed measures such as establishing an insurance scheme, and classifying aquaculture as the second most important sector for water resource allocation during drought alongside other animal farming operations; however, many of these suggestions are yet to be addressed by the multiple authorities regulating aquaculture. A side effect of this deep crisis will be the capacity of carp farms to apply for the EMFAF 2021-2027, which only began its call for applications in early April of this year.