BORIS: I WON’T GIVE UP FISHING RIGHTS
PM’s pledge to ‘take back control’ of coastal waters after EU threat
BORIS Johnson will “take back control” of UK waters after a Brexit fishing row. A leaked EU document shows the bloc could demand continued access for European
trawlers in UK waters. Eurocrats will threaten to block the City of London’s dealings in EU financial markets unless the Government agrees to no new restrictions on fishing, it has emerged.
Details of the EU negotiating plans were revealed after Irish premier Leo Varadkar warned the UK: “You may have to make concessions in areas like fishing in order to get concessions from us in areas like financial services.”
Brexiteers accused the EU of “bluffing” over the move last night, denouncing the threat as “hollow”.
Mr Johnson’s spokesman said Brussels should not doubt the Prime Minister’s “determination” to return the UK to being an independent coastal state after leaving the EU on Friday.
The spokesman said: “Our position on fishing is not going to change. We are going to be taking back control of our coastal waters.
“The EU should be in no doubt about our determination to do that.” The leaked Brussels document, drafted for European diplomats, confirms that EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier will attempt to put fishing on the negotiating table as soon as discussions on a UK-EU trade deal begin in March.
It shows he will insist on the same access for bloc vessels in Britain’s waters after Brexit, along with a role for the European Court of Justice in governing a future trade deal.
Mr Barnier will make a “clear linkage between provisions on fisheries and the free trade agreement/broader economic partnership”, the document says.
The EU will demand “existing reciprocal access to fishing waters and quota shares” and “current distribution keys for fishing opportunities”, it adds.
Owen Paterson, a former Tory environment secretary, said: “Of course the EU are bluffing on this.
“They want to buy our financial services because they don’t have world-class financial services of their own. They want to buy our fish because they don’t have quality stocks.
“When we leave the EU, we will take back control of waters and behave like any normal maritime nation.
“If we want to negotiate on an annual basis for some reciprocal fishing rights, then we might or we might not – but it will be up to us.”
Aaron Brown, of the pressure group Fishing For Leave, said: “The EU’s threats are absolutely hollow brinkmanship.
“People must remember that 70 per cent of UK catches going to the continent means the EU is desperately dependent on UK seafood exports – it is a staple of southern Europe’s diet.
“That dependency will only increase to critical if the EU fleet is denied the ability to rollover the current unlimited access to UK waters to pillage 60 per cent of our fish, which represents a third of their catches.”
The fishing industry is vital to the
UK, with vessels landing 698,000 tons of sea fish in 2018 – carrying a value of £989million.
Our fleet remains the seventh largest in the EU, with 12,000 fishermen employed.
MrVaradkar made his threat over fishing rights in a BBC interview after talks with Mr Barnier in Dublin yesterday.
The Irish premier also claimed the UK was in a weak position in
the forthcoming trade negotiations. He said: “The reality of the situation is that the EU is a union of 27 member states.
“The UK is only one country. And we have a population and a market of 450 million people. The UK, it’s about 60.”
Mr Johnson will take personal command of the Brexit trade negotiations, Downing Street confirmed yesterday.
Negotiators
A task force of negotiators will be based at Number 10 reporting directly to the Prime Minister in his push for a trade deal with Brussels by the end of the year.
Officials described the task force as a “small and agile unit” of about 40 civil servants headed by the PM’s chief negotiator David Frost.
The Department for Exiting the EU will close the moment the UK quits the bloc on Friday at 11pm. About 500 civil servants working at the department will be moved to other parts of Whitehall.
THE 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Holocaust Memorial Day this year are particularly resonant. By the time the next significant anniversary comes – the centenary in 2045 – there will surely be no survivors left.
The word-of-mouth chain of those who survived, including Steven Frank, 84, and Yvonne Bernstein, 82 – poignantly pictured by Kate Middleton – will be broken.
We salute their testimony while noting that, heinously, they are still disbelieved by some. Others question the memorial day itself. But it explicitly mentions other atrocities, including Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia, and is not a competition: rather, it is a means of examining the depths of atrocity that humankind can plumb with the Holocaust as its primary lens.
It is exemplary that Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to ensure that the Holocaust is not forgotten. He has endorsed the National Holocaust Memorial and Education Centre project near the Houses of Parliament and it has been announced that the UK will give £1million towards the preservation of Auschwitz.
And we should note that the memorial day is no mere commemoration but a call for eternal vigilance.
As the great Italian Jewish author Primo Levi – himself a Holocaust survivor – wrote: “What happened can happen again. For this reason, it is everyone’s duty to reflect on what happened.”