WGPlus (Archive)
Editorial Commentary; Foretaste of the EC’s concept of a ‘Fair Trade Deal’? |
Last week provided an example of the sort of free trade deal the UK might be offered by the EU if we are ‘trapped in a Backstop’ treaty with no unilateral way of exiting it. The EC has adopted a contingency proposal to help mitigate impact of a “no-deal” Brexit on EU fisheries, which amends the Regulation on the Sustainable Management of the External Fleets. The aim of this proposal is to ensure that the EU is in a position to grant UK vessels access to EU waters until the end of 2019, on the condition that EU vessels are also granted reciprocal access to UK waters. This proposal is limited to 2019 and (importantly) there is no mention of ‘fish landing rights’ for UK fishermen to land their catch in the EU. According to an article published by British Sea Fishing (Brexit and Britain’s Fisheries); The way quotas are set centrally by the EU is also seen as hugely unfair on British fishermen, as they can often end up getting only a tiny proportion of the catch within their own waters, as the following statistics show:
Not that one has much faith left in the negotiating skills of the UK government, but one would hope that we could get a bit more ’Quid’ for our ‘Pro Quo’ than just letting EU fishermen continue to catch the majority of UK fish, often using unsustainable fishing methods. EC adopts 2 contingency proposals to help mitigate impact of “no-deal” Brexit on EU fisheries Fishing might be one area where the Opposition won’t want to oppose Brexit Editorial commentary; When will the EU ‘play’ its Joker? Less ‘crashing out'; & more ‘planned' departure A highly relevant ‘Brexit debate’ link - Sir Stephen Laws, former First Parliamentary Counsel wrote last week on the Policy Exchange website that the attempts by Grieve etc. to wrest control of Brexit from the Government will fail. PX: The risks of the “Grieve amendment” to remove precedence for Government business |