In Summary:
- The Acting Director General of the National Fishery and Aquaculture Authority of Liberia claims that “Presently, Liberia suffers from what we call pre-identification of the European Union yellow card”.
- The yellow card is a warning from the EU to a country that is not fully cooperating in the fight against illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.
- We have fact-checked this claim and found that Liberia’s EU yellow card, issued in 2017, is not the longest in Africa.
On June 2, 2025, the Acting Director General of the National Fishery and Aquaculture Authority (NaFAA) of Liberia, J. Cyrus Saygbe, appeared in a special radio interview on the Liberia Broadcasting System (LBS) and claimed that Liberia has the longest EU pre-identification or yellow card in Africa.
The EU pre-identification, also known as the yellow card, is a notification issued to countries that the European Commission believes are not fully cooperating in the fight against illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and do not abide by their international obligations.
The issuance of the yellow card is a warning to a country that it could potentially be identified as a “non-cooperating country in the fight against IUU fishing.” When a yellow card is issued, a formal dialogue is set in motion. The yellow card is lifted if a country works to solve all of the issues of concern. However, if a government fails to make sufficient efforts, the Commission issues a red card, listing the country as non-cooperating.
A country to which the Commission issues a red card is barred from exporting into the EU market, which is said to be the largest import market for fisheries products.
The EU regulations to curtail illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing came into force on January 1, 2010.
So, is Liberia the country with the longest history of issuing yellow cards in the fight against IUU fishing?
Given how critical the fishing industry is to Liberia’s economy and the impact of the EU yellow card, we decided to fact-check this claim.
The Claim
Said Mr. Saygbe: “Presently, Liberia suffers from what we call the pre-identification of the European Union yellow card. That has been the longest pre-identification in Africa from 2017 to the present.”
Rating Justification
To fact-check this claim, we conducted multiple online searches to verify this claim, and found a May 2017 publication by the EU IUU Fishing Coalition that confirmed the European Commission had issued a yellow card to Liberia.
The Commission, in its publication, stated that the country lacked information and control over its vessels, noting that this lack of power was confirmed by the listing of a Liberian ship on the international blacklist in October 2016.
Having established that Liberia was issued a yellow card in 2017, we proceeded to verify whether another African country had been issued a yellow card before 2016.
Multiple Google searches and a review of several European Commission documents revealed that Sierra Leone, Liberia’s western neighbour, was also issued a yellow card in April 2016 – nearly a year before Liberia’s yellow card issuance.
To fact-check if Liberia is the African country with the longest-serving European Union yellow card, we reviewed recent documents of the European Commission between 2023 and 2025.
The search was to determine if Liberia and Sierra Leone’s yellow cards were still in place or active.
We found a joint statement issued on May 2025 by the Government of Liberia and the EU Delegation to Liberia in which the two parties committed to collaborating to resolve the yellow card sanctions on Liberia. This statement confirms that the sanction imposed on Liberia remains in effect.
Further checks on the European Union website also show that the sanctions on Sierra Leone remain in force.
The table below, extracted from an EU 2024 document, shows that Sierra Leone is the African country that has been issued the EU yellow card for the most extended period, from 2016 to date.
Conclusion
Based on the evidence above, we conclude that the claim by the Director General of NaFAA, J. Cyrus Saygbeh, that Liberia is the country with the longest EU pre-identification or yellow card in Africa is incorrect.
Our fact check results show that Sierra Leone is the African country currently with the longest EU IUU fishing pre-identification, or ‘yellow card’, issued since 2016 to date, not Liberia.
