Fishing industry key to reeling in Brexit deal

Access to U.K. waters spawns political fight

BRUSSELS — As Brexit talks enter their decisive final days, there’s still a big catch: the fishing industry. It is holding up the trade deal between the European Union and recently departed Britain, jeopardizing hundreds of thousands of jobs and tens of billions of euros in annual production losses.

While fishing is a negligible part of the nations’ economies, it is an important point of national pride for coastal and island nations and has a massive impact on politics.

Arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage put so much stock in the importance of fishing that at one point during his successful 2016 campaign to get Britain out of the EU he steamed up the Thames on a fishing vessel.

Sir Ivan Rogers, a former career diplomat who long was the U.K.’s man at EU headquarters in Brussels, knows what British Prime Minister Boris Johnson must accomplish in the final weeks before the Jan. 1 deadline.

“He has to emerge with a win on fisheries,” Rogers told a panel at the EPC think tank last week.

If Johnson cannot expel enough EU fishing boats from U.K. waters, a

no-deal Brexit would surely ensue, creating chaos and costs for all and ruin for some.

U.K. vessels landed close to 1 billion pounds of fish last year; the gross domestic product of the United Kingdom last year stood at 2.17 trillion pounds.

“It’s not about economics; it’s about politics and the symbolism,” said Barrie Deas, chief executive of Britain’s National Federation of Fishermen’s Organizations.

The French, Britain’s fiercest political rival for access to U.K. waters, know about symbolism — and timing — too.

On a windswept, cold Thursday, French Prime Minister Jean Castex went to the fishing port of Boulognesur-Mer, where on a bright day one can see Britain across the Strait of Dover.

It was a message to all negotiators about how tough France will be in defending its 13,500 fishermen in the last days of negotiations.

“We’re 17 (nautical) miles from Dover, so we’re really close. So it’s really imperative for us to have access to the waters,” local fishing official Olivier Lepretre told Castex. If there is no deal assuring this, he said, “that would mean certain death” for France’s northern fishing fleet.

As well as France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and Denmark are among those directly affected by the potential closing off of U.K. waters.

For centuries, foreign fishermen shared the plentiful waters off Britain, and it has been no different since the U.K. joined the EU in 1973. But as catches dwindled, the number of British fishermen dropped from 22,000 in 1975 to 12,000 in 2018. Resentment in U.K. fishing communities increased.

When Britain voted to leave, saving U.K. waters for U.K. fishermen became a rallying cry that was endorsed right up to the prime minister’s office.

David Keyton Associated Press file The fishing industry has become one of the main stumbling blocks in negotiations for a new trade agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom.