The fish on the plate

9 in 10 kg

The FAO Food Balance Sheet for Romania, item “Fish, Seafood”, sets production, imports, exports and domestic supply side by side in live weight. In 2021, the last distinct column of the current release (the 2023 release repeats the same quantities), production stood at 18 kt, imports at 177 kt, exports at 8 kt and domestic supply at 187 kt. Net imports — imports minus exports — cover 90% of supply. Home production covers the remaining 10%.

The import share is no one-year accident. Between 2010 and 2021, net imports covered between 85% and 93% of supply every year. Of the 187 kt supply, food itself receives 166 kt; 17 kt goes to feed and 3 kt to other uses. Per head, the food supply comes to 8.64 kg a year in live weight. Leaving feed out changes little: even if all home production went to food, it would cover at most 11% of it (18 of 166 kt).

Year	Production	Imports	Exports	Supply	Net imports
2010	12	156	5	162	93%
2011	12	115	8	118	91%
2012	14	122	7	128	90%
2013	15	124	7	133	88%
2014	17	140	6	152	88%
2015	20	145	7	159	87%
2016	25	147	6	166	85%
2017	28	160	7	181	85%
2018	23	171	8	186	88%
2019	24	163	9	178	87%
2020	20	166	8	178	89%
2021	18	177	8	187	90%

Thousand tonnes, live weight. Source: FAO Food Balance Sheets (FAO estimates). The balance closes exactly in 2021: 18 + 177 − 8 = 187.

The fish on the usual shopping list

Pick a fish from the usual list. The answer shows how much of it Romania produced in 2023, caught and farmed, in tonnes live weight, and which countries its imports came through in 2024, in product weight. Zero means every fish of that kind on sale arrived as an import.

Fish	Caught 2023 (t)	Farmed 2023 (t)	Total (t)
Common carp	261	3,061	3,322
Rainbow trout	0	3,527	3,527
Wels catfish	156	104	260
Pike-perch	61	40	101
Pontic shad	454	0	454
Atlantic mackerel	0	0	0
Atlantic salmon	0	0	0
Atlantic herring	0	0	0
Pangasius	0	0	0
Tuna	0	0	0

Romanian production by species, 2023 (tonnes, live weight). Source: FAO Global Production 2025.1.0. The mackerel here is the Atlantic mackerel of the shops; the Mediterranean horse mackerel caught in the Black Sea (54 t in 2023) is a different fish.

Fish	Imports 2024 (t, product weight)	Arrives via
Common carp	4,921	Hungary 48%, Bulgaria 26%, Czechia 6%
Rainbow trout	4,633	Turkey 40%, Bulgaria 30%, Italy 7%
Atlantic mackerel	18,304	the Netherlands 53%, Spain 20%, Poland 10%
Atlantic salmon	10,244	Czechia 28%, Denmark 26%, Sweden 23%
Atlantic herring	7,228	Poland 54%, the Netherlands 17%, Latvia 14%
Pangasius	1,228	Vietnam 89%, the Netherlands 6%, Denmark 2%
Tuna	8,401	Germany 34%, Italy 23%, Spain 14%

Imports in 2024, in tonnes of product weight (whole, fillets, smoked and canned, by the species' customs codes), and the first three countries they came through. Source: Eurostat Comext. Pangasius: frozen catfish fillets (code 0304.62), mostly Vietnamese pangasius. Product weight is not directly comparable with the live weight shown in the table above.

The table has two faces. Romanian carp and rainbow trout come mostly from farms: 3,061 t of farmed carp against 261 t caught, and 3,527 t of trout, all from ponds and raceways. Even carp is imported: 4,921 tonnes in 2024 (product weight), almost half of it via Hungary. Pontic shad — the Danube shad sold at Romanian markets in spring — is still caught in the wild: 454 t in 2023. At the other end, salmon, herring, pangasius and tuna have zero Romanian production. Every kilogram arrives from abroad.

In the 1950s, the reported inland catch averaged 14,680 tonnes a year. In the decade 2014–2023 the average fell to 4,019 tonnes a year: a fall of 73%. How large the fall looks depends on the starting decade: against the 1960s or 1970s it is 68%, against the 1980s, when the catch peaked (26,690 tonnes in 1987), it is 79%. Most of it was lost after 1989: 18,736 tonnes a year in the 1980s, 8,301 in the 1990s, 5,086 in the 2000s. For 2012–2014, 2020 and 2023 the values were filled in by FAO rather than reported by Romania; without those years, the fall from the 1950s stays at 72%.

Romania's total fish production in 2023 came to 17,878 tonnes: 11,264 t from freshwater farms, 3,318 t of inland capture and 3,296 t of marine capture. Farms now carry almost two thirds of production. Open waters — river and sea together — give the rest.

Where the imported fish arrives from

Trade is measured on a different basis from the balance: product weight and value, not live weight. The two measures stay separate on this page and are never added together. In 2024, imports of fish and fish products totalled about 120,000 tonnes product weight. More than four fifths arrive via other European Union member states — the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, Germany and Bulgaria are the first dispatch partners — and among countries outside the Union, Turkey and Vietnam come first. The dispatch country shows the route of the goods, processing and distribution hubs included; the water the fish grew in may lie elsewhere.

Imported product, 2023	USD m
Prepared or preserved tuna (HS 1604.14)	55.2
Fresh or chilled Atlantic salmon (HS 0302.14)	44.6
Frozen mackerel (HS 0303.54)	34.2
Fresh or chilled seabream (HS 0302.85)	23.0
Frozen shrimps and prawns (HS 0306.17)	22.6

Top imported products by value, 2023. Source: FAO GLOBEFISH country profile for Romania (March 2026), import value in US dollars.

By value, prepared tuna stands first, then fresh Atlantic salmon and frozen mackerel. These are exactly the fish with zero Romanian production in the table above. On the export side, Eurofish puts Black Sea rapa whelk at about half of export value in 2024.

Fish per head

The food supply in Romania comes to 8.64 kg per head per year (live weight, 2021). Greece stands at 19 kg, Poland at 11.36 kg, Bulgaria at 7.09 kg, Hungary at 6.45 kg. Romania has more fish for food per head than Bulgaria and Hungary, but less than half as much as Greece. Of that supply, almost all comes from abroad.

Greece		19.00 kg
Poland		11.36 kg
Romania		8.64 kg
Bulgaria		7.09 kg
Hungary		6.45 kg

Kilograms per head per year, live weight, 2021. Source: FAO Food Balance Sheets.

Sources and limits

Limits, stated once: the FAO balance values are estimates, and the 2022 and 2023 columns repeat the 2021 quantities. The balance measures availability, not counted plates. Inland capture covers all inland waters, not the Danube alone, and only what was reported; unreported fishing is missing from the series. Imports by species come from Eurostat trade statistics (Comext): for trade within the Union, the country shown is the one the goods were dispatched from. Wels catfish, pike-perch and Pontic shad have no customs code of their own, so their imports cannot be tracked separately by country. Trade figures are product weight and never mix with the live weight of the balance. Re-exports and processing can hide part of the routes.