British Prime Minister Boris Johnson originally set an October 15 2020 deadline for the conclusion of post-Brexit trade talks between the EU and UK . But the day has now come and gone, and a comprehensive agreement has yet to be reached. Among the reasons for this delay to the proceedings is the vexed matter of whether to continue to allow EU fishing vessels free access, post-Brexit, to British territorial waters. The symbolic importance of our island nation’s ability to protect its surrounding waters from encroachment by foreign fishermen has indeed become a major sticking point when it comes to the UK regaining its status as an “independent coastal state”, newly freed from EU rules and regulations.
The UK first joined the EEC in 1973. Fishing rights in the open seas were, at the time, defined by the London Fisheries Convention of 1964, which gave its signatories, including the UK, the right to fish in a zone extending between six and twelve miles from each other’s coastlines. This was supplemented, and largely superseded, by the EEC’s own Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), effective from 1983, which allowed European fishing vessels access to between 12 and 200 nautical miles from the UK coast. From the very beginning, the CFP was one of the more unpopular aspects of Britain’s membership of the EU.
The CFP provides EU member states with a framework to regulate common fish stocks and to control the activities of their fishing fleets, thereby preventing overfishing. The territorial waters of each member state with a sea or ocean border normally extend for 200 nautical miles from its own coastline. This maritime area constitutes an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), as ratified by the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). The UK’s EEZ, in any event, does not extend to the full 200 nautical miles in most places due to the intervention of various landmasses. The EU treats all member states’ EEZs as a common and shared resource, referred to as “EU waters”, within which EU fishing vessels can fish anywhere, apart from the 12 nautical miles of sea closest to the coast, provided they have been allocated a quota for the stock of fish concerned.
The annually determined total allowable catch (TAC) for each stock of fish-a particular species caught within a defined geographical area- is made up of a series of national quotas. Not all species of fish are assigned a quota of their own. Each EU member state is allocated its own national catch quota, as a fixed proportion of the TAC that stays constant year-on- year. The UK’s annual quota has been calculated from historical records of fishing catches made between 1973 and 1978, in itself a matter for contention.
While the UK is blessed with productive fishing grounds, attractive to EU fishing vessels, commercial fishing contributed just £784 million to the UK economy, accounting for around 0.12 per cent of GDP, in 2018. That same year, a total of 11,961 men and women were reported to be directly engaged in fishing, with another 22,000 employed in fish processing and in servicing the industry. The majority of the UK’s fishing industry is now based in Scotland, particularly in the north-east, where support for Brexit remains strong, for obvious reasons. Some coastal communities are particularly heavily dependent on the remnants of Britain’s once flourishing fishing industry, which helps explain the large numbers of Brexiters to be found there.
The UK’s fishing fleet, consisting of 6,036 UK-registered vessels, is dominated by a few large companies, some of which are based abroad- in places such as Iceland, Spain and the Netherlands. The Scottish fishing industry, on the other hand, consists mainly of family-owned businesses. Fishing rights in British waters are distributed annually, among both companies and individuals, through a Fixed Quota Allocations (FQA) system. The five largest quota holders control more than a third of the fishing quota, while over two-thirds of the industry is in the hands of just 25 businesses.
In an interesting counterbalance, most of the fish eaten in the UK, such as cod and haddock, is imported, while most of the UK’s catch is exported. While we may cherish our fishing traditions, we frequently choose not to eat our own fish. For example, over 90 per cent of the UK’s herring catch is exported to Norway and the Netherlands. This may also explain why eight EU member states have chosen to fish in British waters for hundreds of years. Quota-free exports to the EU of shellfish, 75 per cent of the catch, are particularly important to British fishermen, with fears of crippling tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
There are some concerns when it comes to the matter of territorial integrity. Disputes over fishing rights led to a series of three Cod Wars, between 1958 and 1975, in which the UK took on Iceland, only for Iceland to ultimately gain control over its own 200-mile EEZ. More recently, there have been many instances of minor skirmishes between British fishing vessels and their French and Spanish counterparts, such as the scallop wars of 2018 between fishermen from Cornwall and Normandy, since resolved by inter-government dialogue. A bigger problem for the future arises because cuts to the Royal Navy have depleted the Fisheries Protection Squadron, meaning that policing British waters, post-Brexit, for infringements of fishing restrictions is likely to prove something of a challenge in the years to come.
While the outcome of the trade talks still lies in the balance, the dispute over fishing rights can be seen as emblematic of the larger issue of Brexit itself. Framed as a matter of territorial integrity, national sovereignty, and the protection of domestic industry, fishing is an emotive issue for many Brexiters, out of proportion to its relative importance to Britain’s economy and despite a high level of foreign ownership. Come what may, the ball is now in the UK’s court, as Mr Johnson decides whether to continue with the talks for just a bit longer or concludes that, under the circumstances, a no-deal Brexit is far preferable.
Ashis Banerjee