Exclusive Allocation

An exclusive allocation is the dedicated share of an international quota assigned to one party, a national catch portion carved from a shared total allowable catch. In RFMO and bilateral arrangements each contracting party receives a fixed slice of the TAC under the allocation key, which it may not exceed and which other parties may not fish. In the EU this is each member state’s relative-stability share. Exclusive allocations turn a common-pool stock into bounded national entitlements, and their size is the core of every shared-stock negotiation.