Why the UK and the EU are fighting over fish

After nine months, the UK’s trade talks with the European Union boiled down to the rights of fishing boats from EU countries to catch in UK waters. Both sides want to ensure that fish flow across borders and avoid collisions between ships at sea, and the EU wants to maintain access to waters vital to its commercial fisheries for years to come.

“The discussion about fisheries is still very difficult,” Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission told the European Parliament. “To be honest, sometimes it feels like we won’t be able to solve this question.”

As a member of the EU, the UK had to divide its waters as part of the Common Fisheries Policy. But the British have long said that this unfairly restricts its own industry. The EU has not questioned the UK’s right to control its seas, but insisted that, in exchange for a trade deal and access to the bloc’s internal market, ships from countries such as France, the Netherlands and Belgium part of the catch.

Shared waters

Location of the vessel with the greatest fishing intensity in 2016

The talks focused on what is called the Exclusive Economic Zone, the sea between 12 and 200 nautical miles off the British coast. A section between 6 and 12 miles was also part of the discussion because European ships, particularly those from France, have had access there for centuries, although it was not formally under EU jurisdiction.

Read more: Fish Are Chips in post-Brexit trade negotiations

There are some precedents for countries outside the EU that have fishing agreements with the bloc. For example, the EU has bilateral arrangements with Norway and the Faroe Islands to jointly manage fish stocks and allow European fishermen to work in their waters.

Norway reached a bilateral framework agreement on fisheries cooperation with the UK in September. The country, which has a free trade agreement with the EU as part of its membership of the European Economic Area, has said it will be allowed to close its waters to European Union and UK fishing vessels on January 1 if an agreement between the three parties is up. the end of the month is not over yet.

The EU’s Common Fisheries Policy, which sets catch limits for each country, is designed to address the sharp decline in fish stocks in the world’s fourth-largest fish-producing area and the highest in value in the world.

EU fisheries ministers have set annual limits for each species, known as the total allowable catch, in negotiations that often last well into the night. The idea is that every country should receive a steady share over a long period of time. The catch limits are reviewed every year and can be traded.

Note: Catch limits for zones IVa, IVb, IVc. Share based on available data.

The UK wanted to change the way fish stocks were calculated to use a formula called ‘zonal attachment’ which the government said gave a much more accurate picture of where the fish are now, rather than the EU model based on data from the 1970s. The EU opposed Britain’s attempts to make access and quota numbers dependent on annual negotiations, saying it would hurt the stability of European industry.

According to officials close to the negotiations, the UK rejected an EU bid on Friday that would cause the bloc to lose about 25% of the current 650 million euros ($ 795 million) of fish caught annually in UK waters. The UK is pushing for the cut to get closer to 60%, according to the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

To put that in context, negotiations are stalling over fishing rights equal to about 0.1% of the UK’s gross domestic product. The UK government’s own analysis in 2018 suggested that the economy will be at least 2.6% smaller in 15 years if there is no trade deal.

.Source

Shared waters

Catch limits

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