The 11th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) in Buenos Aires, Argentina ended on December 13, 2017, without final and substantive agreements on international rules to curb fisheries subsidies across the globe. Worse yet, with the 12th Conference tentatively postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic upheaval, the long-standing stalemate at the WTO remained unbroken amidst significant differences of views among its Members. With strong anticipation for expeditious progress, nevertheless, came a new turning point in the future negotiations. While traditional discussions of subsidy issues implicate wide-ranging industries such as energy, information communication technology and agriculture, fisheries subsidies have stood out as emerging concerns attracting global attention. The outcome of the recent WTO Ministerial Conference, however, reflects that growing fisheries subsidies concerns are likely to still remain not addressed for the time being amidst the protracted negotiation impasse due to a political conflict among parties and different standpoints regarding proposed rules. Such being the case, an opportune overview of the landscape of fisheries subsidies negotiations and an insightful discussion of their challenges and prospects are clearly of scholarly and practical significance.This paper aims to examine recent progress, challenges and prospects on fisheries subsidies negotiations in the WTO framework. To this end, it provides an insightful overview of timely fisheries subsidies issues, inter alia, an illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing issue, where gaps in interest among negotiation State parties remain wide. Furthermore, the paper subsequently portrays key stances arguably taken by major negotiating parties. It concludes by providing key suggestions that the parties should take into thorough account in their endeavours, throughout multifaceted prospective talks, to seek a significant breakthrough for a political consensus that would contribute to revitalizing the multilateral negotiation at a standstill
