Sixty coastal communities across nine European Union (EU) nations have called on Brussels to make UK fish exports to the bloc conditional on EU vessels’ access to British waters.
Britain currently exports 80 per cent of its stock, with the majority going to the EU.
Fearing MPs will bow down to angry British fishermen, who overwhelmingly voted to leave the bloc to “take back control of our waters”, the European Fisheries Alliance (EFA) wants Brussels negotiators to demand the same free access European fishermen currently enjoy.
Gerard Van Balsfoort, chairman of the alliance, which represents fishermen from Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Sweden and Ireland, said: “The Brexit agreement needs to take care of our coastal communities.
“The long-term economic future means safeguarding current reciprocal access arrangements to waters and markets and maintaining current distribution of fishing opportunities.”
On Monday the nine nations said they feared “many British policymakers and fisheries professionals have signalled their intention to move away from a fisheries management model based on co-operation and from the acknowledgment of our economic interdependence” and “see Brexit as an opportunity to exclude European fishermen from their traditional fishing grounds”.
British fishermen have been complaining for years about their waters being overfished by other countries and quotas imposed following the adoption of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) when Britain became a member of the European Economic Community, now the EU, in 1973.
They say the industry has suffered a steady decline since then, when commercial fishing was widely considered to have been “sold down the river” to secure Britain’s entry to the ECC.
Almost 60 per cent of British fish are currently taken by other EU countries under the CFP, according to the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation.
Barrie Deas, chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, representing England, Wales and Northern Ireland, told Express.co.uk earlier this year the deal the British Government gets for the fishing industry will be the “litmus test for whether Brexit has been a success or not”.
Environment Minister Michael Gove requested on October 9 to exclude fisheries from the two-year transition period following Britain’s official exit from the EU on March 29, 2019.
An exclusion would mean Britain would be free from the constraints of the CFP from that date.
This would allow the UK to declare an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) 200 miles from the coast, and up to the middle of the English Channel and the middle of the Irish Sea on Britain’s west coast.
Brexiteer Mr Gove told a gathering of fishermen: “In the EEZ, foreign vessels enter on our terms.
“We can not only give UK fishermen first call on the EEZ, we can also manage it more sensibly, so the matter of international law, and the matter of ecological principles coincide.”
British fishermen are hoping a Brexit deal will also include scrapping quotas as up to 27 per cent of all fish caught in the North Sea in 2014 were discarded to ensure vessels were not fined for overfishing, research found.