Fishing speaks to the soul of Brexit mindset

How did an industry that contributes less to the UK’s economy than veterinaries and private detectives become such a focal point in 2016, asks Ciarán O’Driscoll

Prime Minister Boris Johnson on the Opportunis IV fishing trawler, during a visit to Peterhead fish market near Aberdeen. Picture: Duncan McGlynn/PA Wire

As we continue to watch negotiators attempt to prevent Brexit talks from running aground in these final few days, the issue of fisheries has become a knotted net in the propeller.

Why is this? It all comes down to access to territorial waters and quotas for fish.

At one point, the extent to which a coastal country could claim its territorial waters was based on how far a fired cannonball could reach from the shoreline.

Thankfully, this is now an obsolete practice, with rules for the maritime now anchored in the international framework of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Discussions began in 1956, a treaty was signed in 1982, and it entered into force in 1994. Ireland ratified it in 1996, with the UK doing so the following year.

One of its key provisions is the concept of a 200 nautical mile (nm) exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which grants coastal states “sovereign rights for the purposes of exploring and exploiting, conserving and managing the natural resources”. Beyond this is the high seas.

The 200nm zone was a key outcome of UNCLOS in the 1970s. However, some coastal states had unilaterally declared EEZs before UNCLOS had concluded, such as Iceland in 1975 and Norway the following year.

In response to this, the then members of the EU, including Ireland and the UK, jointly extended their territorial waters in the Atlantic and North Sea in 1977 from 12nm to 200nm.

Overnight, a vast area of the north-east Atlantic fell under EU law. Who could access it?

Since 1970, the principle of ‘equal conditions of access’ has been in place in the EU and allowed any EU-flagged vessel to access the territorial waters of another. The decision in 1977 to extend the EEZ to 200nm saw this principle now extend to a huge area of ocean in Europe.

As equal conditions of access were enshrined into EU law before the 1972 round of accession, some suspect that this was done to ensure the EU fleet would continue accessing the stock-rich waters of Ireland and the UK.

To the UK industry, this principle is an unfair rule that the EU imposed as a condition to join, one on which they had no say. However, it resulted in the EU fleet, including Ireland, being able to rely on equal conditions to access key stocks in UK waters.

Brexit might now upend this, with the UK seeking to end equal conditions of access for its entire 200nm EEZ.

And where do quotas for stocks fit into this?

Prior to the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) coming into existence in 1983, quotas or total allowable catch (TAC) as they’re formally known now did not exist.

Each year, based on recommendations by the International Council of the Exploration of the Sea, the European Commission drafts TACs, which are negotiated between EU fishery ministers, with the key agreement reached in Brussels the week before Christmas.

TACs are also based on the CFP principle of ‘relative stability’, which sets a fish stock based on historic catch records of EU member states.

However, British fishers have long argued that ‘relative stability’ does not reflect the correct share of stocks in their waters, given that the seas around these islands are one of the most abundant fishing areas in the world.

This perception of unfair TACs, combined with little ability to limit access to their waters, was the basis of grievances toward the EU that have never wavered.

Then came the referendum in the UK in 2016.

Sea fisheries slotted perfectly into the narrative around the Leave campaign: take back control of British waters by having fewer foreign boats (no more equal access) and set better quotas for British boats (no more relative stability).

To British fisheries, it was an opportunity to right a decades-old wrong imposed on them as part of EU membership.

This is despite the fact that around 70% of all UK seafood is exported to the EU’s Single Market. The consequences of limiting EU access to UK waters would, in turn, result in the EU limiting UK access to its Single Market. This economic consideration was ignored or downplayed then.

Organisations such as Fishing for Leave kept the issue front and centre in the campaign, demonstrated most memorably with their flotilla up the river Thames, near the end of the campaign.

But how did an industry, which in the UK contributes less to the national economy than veterinaries and private detectives, become a focal point in 2016?

Sea fisheries touches upon the sharp edges of statehood: borders, ownership, ruling, issues that were all so tightly bound up in the referendum, where the winning slogan was ‘take back control’.

For Brexiters, fisheries rests atop those promised sunny uplands, to prove to all that Brexit can achieve real sovereignty.

Ciarán O'Driscoll: As we watch negotiators attempt to prevent Brexit talks from running aground, the issue of fisheries has become a knotted net in the propeller. Picture: Conor McCabe 

This is why fisheries has become an insurmountable obstacle in Brexit.

On one side, the EU would like as much of the status quo (equal conditions of access and relatively stability) to be preserved, while the UK wishes to set up its own regime as a state no longer bound to that status quo.

And it is in this gulf that a compromise must be found.

But this is not the first time that fisheries has consumed so much political oxygen. 

Iceland threatened removal of Nato operations there during its long-running ‘Cod Wars’ with the UK from the 1950s to 1970s.

The Faroe Islands, with an economy highly dependent on fisheries, endured some 10 months of EU fishery trade sanctions in 2013–14 over disagreements with the EU and Norway in setting herring and mackerel TACs.

In 2018, British and French boats clashed in the English Channel during the ‘Scallop Wars’, while in 2019 Ireland and Scotland had a dispute over the remote outcrop of Rockall.

These are examples of how troubled the waters can be in the north-east Atlantic, when co-operation and compromise cannot be found.

These are key to ensure these precious resources are exploited sustainably, so that our fishing communities, like my home of Castletownbere in West Cork, can continue to have a future.

• Ciarán O’Driscoll is the Policy and Research Officer at European Movement Ireland.