The Commission has stated that these emergency measures cannot mitigate the overall impact of a no-deal scenario, nor can it in any way replicate all the benefits of EU membership or the conditions for a transition period as envisaged in the Withdrawal Agreement. Please note that the APPG for Fisheries is not a government agency or decision-making body. It provides an informal forum for debate and discussion on issues of importance to the UK fishing industry, but does not participate in policy-making. Any EU vessel wishing to fish in UK waters requires a licence from the relevant fishing authority – and vice versa. It also ended the Granville Bay Agreement, signed in 2000 by Britain and the autonomous Channel Islands, which had established a model of rights for French ships up to three miles off the coast of the islands. Instead of fishing illegally in UK waters, many EU countries claim that if the UK wants to continue selling fish in the EU`s duty-free internal market, EU vessels will still need access to UK waters. This is an argument that representatives of the Danish fishing industry have made on several occasions. In the BBC Radio 4 programme World of Business in August 2017, Professor Richard Barnes, an internationally recognised expert in maritime law at the University of Hull, believes that the status quo of the current CFP rules “will be maintained for the next five to ten years” because of the time and resources the UK would have to devote to establishing new rules. Regulations and laws on quotas and fishing rights.

Another important issue is trade. The UK already exports large quantities of fish caught in UK waters to the EU and imports much of the fish consumed on the domestic market from countries that are not part of the EU but of the internal market (such as Iceland and Norway). In this way, the fish trade between the UK and the EU is very closely linked, leading to speculation that any trade deal between the UK and the EU would have access to European fisheries in the UK fishing waters it contains. British fishermen replied that they can simply sell the fish they catch outside the EU when there is no longer a duty-free agreement to export british catches to the EU. Others stressed that both sides would benefit from a post-Brexit compromise agreement that would give EU countries some access to UK waters under a regulated licensing deal in exchange for the UK`s access to the sale of catches to the EU. At the end of September 2020, amid optimism that an agreement could be reached by mid-October after the UK government postponed the final revision of the Single Market Act until the end of the year, negotiators from both sides suggested to the Daily Telegraph that a fisheries deal could be reached if both sides made the effort. This would, in principle, increase the UK`s quotas over time, although many details still need to be worked out. [89] At the end of the month, the UK had also proposed a three-year transition period to phase in the EU`s lower quotas. [108] Under WTO rules, all fishery products exported to the EU would be valued at a duty rate of 9.6%[135] and, under EU law, would be subject to additional customs procedures and regular sanitary and phytosanitary measures, from which they are currently exempt from external spot checks.

A retired Scottish fishing boat captain, John Buchan, says these controls will have a more detrimental impact on the market value of British lobsters than any tariff. “I`ve heard that high-end products like high-quality Scottish Norway lobster will find their place in the market because of demand,” he told reporters and the Journal. “The problem is that it won`t be a top quality if he has to stay in a truck in Calais or in a bonded warehouse for several days and wait for customs clearance.” [136] Delays caused by SPS controls can be further extended by limited capacity in France: the EU-designated border inspection post on the French side of the Channel where these checks can be carried out is not located in Calais, but in Dunkirk, 45 km (28 miles) away,[137]:30, and is only open for a few hours each day of the week. [138] [aa] In late 2018, Theresa May announced that a withdrawal agreement had been reached defining how the UK would leave the EU. In a separate political declaration, plans for the future of uk-EU relations have been laid out, although this is not binding. As regards fisheries, the Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration did not contain strong conditions or arrangements on future fishing opportunities, but only that it was expected that a fisheries agreement would enter into force by July 2020. This vagueness has led many in the UK fishing industry to fear that the government is preparing to give EU countries access to UK fishing waters after 2020 in exchange for a trade deal with the EU, with many fishermen calling the withdrawal agreement a betrayal. European leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron have said he will prevent the UK from moving forward with a post-Brexit trade deal with the EU unless French fishermen are granted unlimited access to British waters, but Theresa May insisted she would not “sell” British fishermen and that the UK would return to an “independent coastal nation” after Brexit. Will.. .