No end to the EU’s crazy fishing policy

There's no end to the EU’s crazy fishing policy - Few people under 50 can recall a time when Britain had Europe’s largest fishing fleet, writes Christopher Booker.

There could be no more eloquent epitaph on the destruction of Britain’s once-proud fishing industry than the recent revelation that 23 per cent of the entire fishing quota Brussels allows Britain now goes to a single giant Dutch trawler, the Cornelis Vrolijk, to land all its catches in Holland.

Few people under 50 can recall a time when Britain had Europe’s largest fishing fleet and 80 per cent of all its fishing waters. But back in the 1990s, this column was almost alone in reporting what had followed after Edward Heath was so desperate to enter “Europe” that he gave way to Brussels’s new demand (not even legally authorised by the treaties) that all fishing waters must be merged as a “common European resource”.

The only way fishing rights could then be parcelled out among the member states was by a complex system of national “quotas”, which allowed Britain’s fishermen just 13 per cent by value of this new “common resource”. To allow everyone a share required drastic cuts in fleet sizes, such as the time when we were ordered to make a further 19 per cent cut, while Spain’s huge fleet lost only 4 per cent. This was hailed by John Gummer, our then-fisheries minister, as “a good deal” for our fishermen. Related Articles

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Eventually, I found this dreadful story so depressing that I stopped reporting it. Now, years later, after yet another dismal meeting in Brussels, we are told the environmental “discards” disaster has been ended. Fishermen must now bring all their catch back to land. But only so that millions of fish can now be discarded to landfill instead.

So Britain’s fleet continues to shrink, while 43 per cent of the UK’s quota has now been bought up by foreign-owned vessels (32 per cent going to just five boats, including the Cornelis Vrolijk). And still we hear our latest fisheries minister telling us that this new deal represents “the best possible” outcome for Britain. Bah, humbug.

Full story courtesy of the Daily Telegraph