Fisheries Act & Brexit – Join the APPG Webinar – with George Eustice on Thursday February 25th – click here to join the webinar
World Fishing
As the transition period ended with 2020, the UK became subject to the same rules and requirements as any other third country trading with the European Union. As Britain’s fishing industry had during the referendum campaign been Brexit’s poster child, used to highlight every wrong that could be put right, as January dawned it immediately became the focus of exactly how new and different the relationship with Europe is.
The media were flooded with tales of stranded cargoes of fish, outraged exporters struggling to deal with new paperwork, substantial losses and long-established traders facing ruin. This is a situation that affects business as a whole, not just the seafood industry. But the highly perishable nature of seafood and the reliance on prompt delivery mean that fishing inevitably became an early victim of Brexit.
British boats have been tied up as market access has dried up, and in Europe there are also fishing vessels that have spent the whole of this year so far at the quayside as their fishing opportunities still have yet to be clarified.
Aside from the jaw-dropping moments as Britain’s Minister for Fisheries admitted to having been too busy with Christmas preparations to read the trade deal on the day it was concluded, and a senior Parliamentary figure made the risible claim that fish in UK waters had become “better and happier now they are British,” the UK government is seen as having thrown its fishermen under a bus, while presenting the trade agreement with the EU as a serious triumph of international diplomacy by securing tariff-free trade. But the devil is in the detail, in particular in the fine detail and complexity of the extensive bureaucracy that is part and parcel of this new third country status, and it has been a hard realisation.
Few industries will come out of this unscathed – especially an industry as highly international as fishing and seafood – and others clearly won’t survive.
The disappointment within the UK fishing industry and the feeling that fishing has been sacrificed is very visible. The gains achieved in quota shares are nowhere near what the UK industry had hoped to see, and in Europe there is similar frustration as many European fishermen also feel that they have been sacrificed to achieve a wider trade deal.
For the UK it’s not easy to see who gains much. Quota lifts are chiefly in pelagic species that will flow to one of the fishing industry’s more prosperous sectors. Gains that have been achieved, which come with considerable downsides, won’t make their way to the sectors of UK fishing that have traditionally been short of opportunities and rely overwhelmingly on non-quota species to survive.
The gains have will go to those who are already millionaires, while the sectors that so emphatically supported Brexit and campaigned hard for it are likely to find themselves no better off, while their markets have become more distant and harder to supply.
For much of the UK’s fishing industry and for seafood buyers in Europe, the final act of Britain’s departure from the European Union has been a rough landing.
As the transition period ended with 2020, the UK became subject to the same rules and requirements as any other third country trading with the European Union. As Britain’s fishing industry had during the referendum campaign been Brexit’s poster child, used to highlight every wrong that could be put right, as January dawned it immediately became the focus of exactly how new and different the relationship with Europe is.
The media were flooded with tales of stranded cargoes of fish, outraged exporters struggling to deal with new paperwork, substantial losses and long-established traders facing ruin. This is a situation that affects business as a whole, not just the seafood industry. But the highly perishable nature of seafood and the reliance on prompt delivery mean that fishing inevitably became an early victim of Brexit.
British boats have been tied up as market access has dried up, and in Europe there are also fishing vessels that have spent the whole of this year so far at the quayside as their fishing opportunities still have yet to be clarified.
Aside from the jaw-dropping moments as Britain’s Minister for Fisheries admitted to having been too busy with Christmas preparations to read the trade deal on the day it was concluded, and a senior Parliamentary figure made the risible claim that fish in UK waters had become “better and happier now they are British,” the UK government is seen as having thrown its fishermen under a bus, while presenting the trade agreement with the EU as a serious triumph of international diplomacy by securing tariff-free trade. But the devil is in the detail, in particular in the fine detail and complexity of the extensive bureaucracy that is part and parcel of this new third country status, and it has been a hard realisation.
Few industries will come out of this unscathed – especially an industry as highly international as fishing and seafood – and others clearly won’t survive. The disappointment within the UK fishing industry and the feeling that fishing has been sacrificed is very visible. The gains achieved in quota shares are nowhere near what the UK industry had hoped to see, and in Europe there is similar frustration as many European fishermen also feel that they have been sacrificed to achieve a wider trade deal.
For the UK it’s not easy to see who gains much. Quota lifts are chiefly in pelagic species that will flow to one of the fishing industry’s more prosperous sectors. Gains that have been achieved, which come with considerable downsides, won’t make their way to the sectors of UK fishing that have traditionally been short of opportunities and rely overwhelmingly on non-quota species to survive.
The gains have will go to those who are already millionaires, while the sectors that so emphatically supported Brexit and campaigned hard for it are likely to find themselves no better off, while their markets have become more distant and harder to supply. Click here to read more
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