Wednesday December 22, 2021
Norway deal “ridiculous”
British fishermen are angry with the government
After leaving the EU, the UK will have to renegotiate access to fishing grounds for its fishermen. This includes the Norwegian waters. The responsible state secretary is satisfied with an agreement – the industry is angry and is putting the government under pressure.
British deep-sea fishermen have expressed outrage over the quotas for 2022 negotiated in a fisheries agreement between their country and Norway. “We are more than disappointed with this result, we are totally devastated for our crews,” said Jane Sandell, Managing Director of UK Fisheries, the operator of the UK’s largest trawler “Kirkella”. She described the quotas obtained by the British negotiators as “ridiculous”. That is not enough for a profitable company.
The “Kirkella”, which could supply British fish-and-chip shops with ten percent of their needs on their own, has been anchored in Kingston upon Hull in the north of England for around a year. By leaving the EU, Great Britain had lost the access to Norwegian waters negotiated via Brussels. The “Kirkella” is dependent on it. Now a better result must be achieved in negotiations with Greenland, warned Sandell.
After talks with Norway about mutual access to the fishing waters initially failed, both sides presented an agreement. The agreement offers “opportunities for the British fleet and ensures a strong balance that serves both the fishing industry and the protection of the marine environment,” said British Secretary of State for Fisheries, Victoria Prentis.
EU and Great Britain agree on catch quotas
After weeks of negotiations, the European Union and Great Britain also agreed on the fishing quotas in jointly fished waters for the coming year. This was announced by the EU Fisheries Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius. Sinkevicius emphasized that the agreement would be based on the “best available scientific knowledge”. The agreement was reached on Tuesday, around a week after the conclusion of negotiations within the EU on catch quotas.
Environmental protection organizations criticized the EU’s agreement with Great Britain as unsustainable. As in the times before Great Britain left the EU, “short-term economic interests” had priority over sustainability for fish and fishermen, ClientEarth said. Oceana stressed that several stocks would continue to be overfished, such as herring in the North Sea west of Scotland, whiting in the Irish Sea and cod in the Celtic Sea.
The British-French dispute over fishing licenses in the English Channel is still unsolved. Great Britain granted 23 additional licenses to French fishermen in mid-December, but France had requested 104 new permits.