Deputy Prime Minister Hồ Quốc Dũng chairs the 35th session of the National Steering Committee on combating IUU fishing on Tuesday. — VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — Provinces and cities that enforce fishing rules decisively have seen real progress against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU), while those that merely go through the motions continue to see violations persist, Deputy Prime Minister Hồ Quốc Dũng said on Tuesday.

The Deputy PM made the remarks while chairing the 35th session of the National Steering Committee on combating IUU fishing, held in person and virtually weeks after the European Commission's (EC) fifth inspection of Việt Nam's fisheries controls in June.

Dũng said the seafood sector had earned billions of dollars over the past five years and continued to be a pillar of the economy, but acknowledged that inconsistent enforcement at the local level was the main reason the EC's 'yellow card' remains in place after eight years.

He said coordination between ministries and localities remained weak and that fisheries data failed to match up across agencies. He called for a single, unified national tracking system to close that gap.

He also credited police forces for cracking down on cases involving disabled or tampered tracking devices, and said the coast guard and border guard had stepped up inspections of seafood imports and vessel movements.

But he said the broader push to digitise fleet-management records still fell short of the mark, leaving data sharing between ministries and agencies fragmented.

Looking past the immediate EU review, the Deputy PM called for a longer-term sustainable fisheries strategy covering everything from breeding stock and harvesting to processing, exports and technology.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Environment Võ Thành Hưng told the meeting that the oversight structure from the central government down to localities had been streamlined, fisheries regulations tightened and vessel monitoring stepped up since the EC's last inspection.

Of 267 tasks the government assigned before that inspection, 254 had been completed; of 35 more assigned afterwards, 21 were done, and 14 were still in progress.

The June inspection produced mostly favourable feedback, he said, but the EC also flagged 37 recommendations across five areas that still need to be addressed.

The VN-Fishbase database now tracks 80,332 fishing vessels, according to Hưng. Of those, approximately 92 per cent have valid registration, roughly 96 per cent hold valid fishing permits and 98.5 per cent carry food-safety certification.

Among boats 15 metres or longer, 99.6 per cent now carry satellite tracking devices, and both the number of vessels straying beyond legal fishing zones and those going dark on the monitoring system have fallen from a year earlier.

A coast guard officer checks a fishing vessel’s licence and compliance with anti-IUU regulations. — VNA/VNS Photo

In the first half of the year, authorities designated 94 fishing ports nationwide, 79 of them cleared for offshore vessels. Enforcement teams ran 138 patrols, inspected 2,502 boats and fined 261 of them a combined VNĐ4.6 billion ($175,000).

Even so, officials reported 4,713 violations detected but only 1,341 actually penalised, citing a backlog of unresolved cases. Eight vessels were caught fishing in foreign waters so far this year, down 86.7 per cent from the same period in 2025, but Hưng said the figure was still short of what the EU expects.

To close that gap, the ministry leader proposed treating the period through August 31 as a critical enforcement window, with heads of coastal provinces and cities personally overseeing results, unresolved cases cleared on a fixed timeline and officials who miss targets subject to regular review.

Other ministry and provincial representatives told the meeting that the biggest unresolved problems include boats that repeatedly go dark on satellite tracking, continued incursions into foreign waters, slow data integration across agencies and traceability systems at seafood processors and exporters that fail to sync up nationally.

Closing the session, Deputy PM Dũng ordered ministries and coastal provinces and cities to act on the day's agreed measures right away.

He said local leaders would be held fully accountable for results in their own jurisdictions, and called for regular reviews of officials whose units fail to fulfil their duties. — VNS