EU Blue Economy Report 2025: a strong growth trajectory
The European Commission has just released the EU Blue Economy Report 2025, providing a detailed analysis of the economic performance, sustainability, and evolving trends across Europe’s marine and maritime sectors. This annual flagship report is a key resource for understanding the contribution of the Blue Economy to the EU’s overall economy, offering data and insights across sectors such as fisheries, aquaculture, coastal tourism, marine renewable energy, shipbuilding, and marine research.
The 2025 edition highlights both the resilience of the Blue Economy in the face of global challenges and the sector’s growing importance in achieving Europe’s climate, innovation, and social inclusion goals. The report also pays particular attention to the role of sustainable practices, digitalisation, and social equity in shaping the future of ocean-based industries.
This year, the report places a much-needed spotlight on the role of women in the sector. Despite progress, the report acknowledges that women continue to face structural barriers in male-dominated maritime sectors such as fisheries, aquaculture, marine research, and shipping. Exclusionary workplace norms, unequal access to leadership, and insufficient work-life balance support remain key challenges that discourage women’s participation and advancement.
However, a lack of comprehensive gender-disaggregated data across most Blue Economy sectors continues to hinder the EU’s ability to design targeted and effective gender equality policies. As the report highlights, current official gender-specific statistics are largely limited to the marine living resources sector, covering fisheries, aquaculture, and fish processing.
This is precisely where WIN-BIG contributes. Alongside our sister project WINBLUE, and other initiatives such as she4sea and Women on Board, WIN-BIG is recognised as a key EU-funded project supporting the collection of gender-sensitive data, the mapping of existing barriers, and the promotion of female leadership across all six EU sea basins and emerging Blue Economy sectors.
Our work, particularly through our ongoing gender mapping survey, policy research, and mentorship initiatives, aims to fill the knowledge gaps that limit progress and to support the development of inclusive, data-informed policies that reflect the realities women face in ocean-related industries.
Explore the full report and the gender focus section here: EU Blue Economy Report 2025
