The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Call for fisheries leaders to sort Brexit trade talks
Politics: Former World Trade Organisation head in bid to break deadlock
Fishing industry leaders in the UK and European Union should be brought into the Brexit trade talks to break the deadlock, the former head of the World Trade Organisation has said.
As the UK and EU teams begin their final round of negotiations this week, Pascal Lamy called for “the politics and legal complexities” to be taken out of the fisheries talks, which are at an impasse.
The UK team has accused the EU of not “accepting the reality” that Britain
“You’re coming now to some pretty thorny political issues”
will be an independent coastal state at the end of the year, while the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has rejected UK proposals for annual negotiations on quotas, saying EU fishermen needed “predictability” in the form of continued “status quo” access to UK fishing grounds after Brexit.
Mr Lamy, director general of the WTO from 2005 to 2013, said it is time for “compromise” on both sides.
“If I had to frame a solution, it would be: Leave diplomats out and put the fish industry on various sides of the table and let them do the deal,” he said.
“Get this out of politics, out of legal complexities, put around the table the people who know what sustainable fishing is about, who are the real stakeholders, who will have reasonable expectations if the deal is left in their hands.”
Mr Lamy acknowledged the suggestion, this late in the negotiation, was “out of the box thinking” but said it could be what is needed to get past such a “sensitive” area of the trade talks.
Mr Lamy also said the “rational” thing to do would be to postpone talks until the pandemic is fully under control.
Looking to the longer term, the former European commissioner for trade said the issue of Brexit will “still be here 70 years from now”.
“The relationship will be up and down. Of course we’ve been instructed by experience that when the debate is rational, UK joined the EU, when economics overcame politics the UK joined and when politics overcame economics the UK left. It’s a permanent fixture”, he said.
David Henig, former assistant director at the Department for International Trade, said whatever the final settlement is, “it’s not going to give everything that everybody ever wanted”.
Mr Henig said: “Expectations are quite low. A good result is probably that you don’t end the week with both sides issuing statements attacking the other.
“You’re coming now to some pretty thorny political issues and political decisions. There’s actually not a lot negotiators can do about that. That is shaped by their instructions from politicians and at the moment I don’t think either side has the flexibility to move from their position.”
If there is not an agreement before September, the last feasible date at which a deal could be agreed and ratified by the EU, the UK would leave in December without a deal.