Europe’s fisheries sector is hoping to use a defense pact soon to be under negotiation between the E.U. and U.K. as leverage to improve upon a post-Brexit trade deal made between the two sides and gain greater access to lucrative fishing grounds.
The two sides will meet at a summit on 19 May in London, U.K., to discuss defense and economic cooperation amid global uncertainty. Some E.U. coastal states said they hope the summit will culminate in a deal that codifies fisheries guarantees.
“There are sensitive issues for many E.U. countries, such as fisheries, which need to be addressed,” Jessica Rozencrantz, the minister for European Union affairs of Sweden, said, per the Financial Times. “I would really urge both the E.U. and U.K. to find agreements on these various issues so that we can enter profound defense cooperation.”
The fisheries agreement between the E.U. and Britain was already due to be reviewed in 2026, but renegotiation can’t come soon enough, according to Irish Fish Producers Organization (IFPO) CEO Aodh O’Donnell, who said his members want “a rebalancing of the disproportionate quota transfers that took place in 2020, where we contributed 40 percent of the total value transferred from Europe to the U.K.”
O’Donnell told SeafoodSource the “fundamentally flawed” deal cost IFPO members …
