Fisheries surrender was a great scandal

THE story of the surrender of the world’s richest fishing waters, consisting of the seas surrounding Britain and Ireland, is one of the most scandalous in the history of the EU.

In the initial negotiations for membership no mention was made of a common fisheries policy for the simple reason it didn’t exist. Nor did any equivalent legislation exist. But in the months preceding the membership applications, lawyers at the Council of Ministers were instructed to search for a legal basis in the Treaty of Rome for giving equal access rights to these waters to all member states.

The council’s lawyers made no less than six attempts to find a legal basis for such a policy in the articles of the treaty. Despite their lack of success, and the absence of any legal foundation, a regulation was drafted defining the ‘equal access’ principle, which was made a condition for entry into the then EEC.