Britain Wants Sizable Share In Fishing Outputs From EU Coastal Nations

Last updated on November 12th, 2020 at 06:13 am

Britain Wants Sizable Share In Fishing Output: Michel Barnier is all in favour of a middle ground between the EU nations and Britain over fishing deals. However, the British PM is not happy with the 15percent of the total worth of fish that the fishermen catch. Mr. Boris Johnson has deemed the chief negotiator for Brussel’s deal as ‘not enough’ for the EU nations to make use of British waters for fishing. 

A joint meeting was conducted last week between Barnier and fisheries ministers from the coastal EU countries. These comprised Ireland, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, France and Sweden. It was decided that European nations would have to play a fair game if they wanted access to the British waters for their fishery trade to work smoothly. 

The agreed upon share of £90million is not seeming as an impressive share to Johnson.  According to Barnier’s official statement, EU would catch as much as €650million worth of fish from the British waters. According to the British negotiator David Frost, UK insists that the quota of share should be decided depending on where the fish stock originate. 

Anything more than the 15% would mean a sizable chunk to be shared by the coastal countries. According to analysts, EU member-states will try to do some burden sharing amongst themselves so not one single member-states takes all the pain of the quota loss. 

But the loss might be inevitable as Britain is not willing to accept Barnier’s terms laid out. The latter had been asked to ensure that he does his part of the deal; to ensure yield source is open to the coastal countries for them to be able to maintain their business as usual. France is being headstrong about the quota and the fact that Britain is showing its upper hand. However, the consensus in the EU is that Britain will get its say and probably its way through, and the coastal countries will have to figure a way out to move ahead.