Fishing holds key as Brexit nearing
BRUSSELS — As Brexit talks enter their 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, putting at risk hundreds of thousands of jobs and tens of billions of euros in annual production losses.
While fishing is a small part of the nations’ economies, it’s an important point of national pride for coastal and island nations and has an impact on politics.
Ivan Rogers, a former career diplomat who long was the U.K.’s man at EU headquarters in Brussels, knows what the task is of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson during 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 this 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 Boulogne-sur-Mer, from where on a bright day, across the Strait of Dover, Britain is visible.
It was a show to all negotiators how tough France will be in defending its 13,500 fishermen during 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 implicated 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, so to the number of British fishermen — from 22,000 in 1975 to 12,000 in 2018.
EU trawlers venturing freely in U.K. waters came to be seen as a symbol of plunder. 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.
“It’s about sovereignty. It’s about what Brexit is for,” Deas said.
In an ideal scenario, British fishermen would have all the waters to themselves, able to expand what so long has been a diminishing industry.
No one could deny Britain’s rights to its waters, but it’s not that simple. The EU came into the trade negotiations demanding that its boats continue being allowed to fish. Even though Brexit left the bloc in a much weaker position, U.K. exports gave it leverage.
“If they don’t allow our boats in, they can eat all the fish they catch themselves,” said a diplomat from a seafaring EU nation. Some 80 percent of fish landed in the U.K. is exported, and threequarters of that goes to the EU.