Brexit Britain will lead world in green fishing, UK claims, as EU accused of massive overfishing

Britain will lead the world in sustainable fishing once it leaves the Brexit transition period and the Common Fisheries Policy, UK officials said on Wednesday, as the EU was accused of overfishing nearly nine million tonnes of fish.

EU governments have regularly awarded themselves catch levels far higher than scientific advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea during yearly intra-bloc negotiations about annual fishing limits in Brussels.

The EU, including the UK, has overfished 8.78 million tonnes of fish in the last two decades, despite passing a law to end overfishing by 2020, a report by Our Fish and the New Economics Foundation said.

Britain and the EU are deeply divided over fisheries in the deadlocked Brexit trade negotiations. Brussels wants to preserve EU boats’ access to UK waters “under existing conditions” and has made a fisheries deal a precondition of any free trade agreement.

The UK insists any fishing agreement must be separate from the trade deal with access negotiated annually and based on “scientific principles”.

Boris Johnson called on EU leaders to intervene to break the deadlock, a request which was given short shrift in Brussels, after Michel Barnier accused the UK of wasting time in the last round of negotiations.

“The UK has long championed the conservation of the marine environment and our plans are to set a gold standard for sustainable fishing around the world,” a government official said.

“As we become an independent coastal state, we are committed to working closely with our partners including the EU, Norway and Faroe Islands to manage shared stocks in a sustainable way and share fishing opportunities on a fair and scientific basis.”

“EU fisheries ministers continue to radically undermine the one ecosystem that provides us with the best protection against climate change - the ocean,” said Rebecca Hubbard, of the Our Fish group.

Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Netherlands and Germany were most successful in pushing up their quotas above sustainable limits over the last 20 years, according to the report,

But no other EU member state overfished more than the UK, which received 1,759,000 tonnes of quota above scientific advice over the last two decades.

Campaigners suggest that failure to agree on shares of the quota with non-EU members Norway and Iceland could be partly to blame for the overfishing.

“The UK Government must now demonstrate that it is committed to ending the destructive overfishing that is undermining both the ocean’s capacity to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis, and that of their local industry,” said Ms Hubbard.

“The Common Fisheries Policy has led to significant improvements in sustainable fisheries in the North-East Atlantic over the past 20 years,” a European Commission spokeswoman said.

She pointed out that in 2003, 70 per cent of the stocks were overfished. In response, the commission proposed fishing limits “for every single stock managed entirely by the EU where scientists are confident about their predictions”.

The UK leaves the Common Fisheries Policy at the end of the Brexit transition period on December 31. The government has ruled out extending the period, despite the risk of the UK crashing out on WTO terms because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Extending the transition period would prolong UK membership of the EU fisheries policy, which disadvantages British fisherman because shares of the catch are based on historical catches dating back to the 1970s.