UK ministers have proclaimed that the latest fishing quota agreement with the EU will allow British fishers to catch 30,000 more tonnes of fish in 2023 than would have been possible before Brexit.
Under the latest annual agreement unveiled by ministers on Tuesday (20 December), British boats will be allowed to catch 140,000 tonnes of fish worth £280 million next year, a 27% increase on the 110,000 tonnes that the UK would have been allocated as an EU member, said ministers.
“We are 30,000 tonnes better off now that we are outside the EU than we would’ve been if we’d remained as a member state,” fisheries minister Mark Spencer told lawmakers in the House of Commons on Tuesday.
“This deal is better than we would’ve negotiated if we’d been within the EU,” Spencer added.
For its part, the European Commission stated that the agreement had secured fishing opportunities of over 350,000 tonnes for the EU fleet, worth around €1 billion. The agreement covers all shared and jointly managed fisheries resources in EU and UK waters,
EU gives up 25% of fish quota in UK waters
European Union fishing fleets will have to give up a quarter of their current catch in British waters over the next five and a half years, officials said Thursday (24 December).
Despite contributing around 0.1% to its GDP, the state of the UK fisheries industry was one of the main arguments used by Brexiteers in the years before and during the 2016 referendum campaign. The UK has also agreed annual fishing quotas with Norway covering the North Sea and Arctic waters.
The UK has clawed back some of its available stock under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the EU, which came into force in 2021. Under the deal, 25% of the previous EU quota in UK waters will be transferred to the UK until June 2026.
After 2026, future negotiations between the EU and UK on access and share of stocks will take place on an annual basis.
However, despite the prospects of a slight boost to the fishing industry, research published by the Centre for European Reform also on Tuesday estimated that Brexit cost the UK economy £40 billion in the year up to July 2022.
“There can be no doubt that the UK economy is significantly smaller as a result of Brexit,” said John Springford, who leads the CER’s research project which compares the UK economy with a doppelganger as if the UK had remained in the EU.
“In March 2022, when he was chancellor, Rishi Sunak tacitly accepted the OBR’s projection that the economy would be around 4% smaller, and as a result raised tax by £46 billion to ensure public services would be funded,” said Springford.
“According to my analysis, almost all of those tax rises wouldn’t have been needed if Britain had remained in the EU.”
Angry French fishermen threaten British imports
Fishermen in northern France have threatened to disrupt British imports in a bid to increase pressure on London to grant them more licences for UK waters.
[Edited by Frédéric Simon]
Source: euractiv.com
