The European Economic Community, as the European Union then was, changed its rules to give Brussels control over national fishing waters shortly before the United Kingdom joined in the 1970s, bringing the richest fishing waters in western Europe with it.
The EU currently doles out more than half of those stocks to other EU member-states — Britain left the bloc at the beginning of 2020 but remains a member in all but name through the ongoing “transition” period — and has over the years overseen massive job losses in the British fishing industry, with thousands of British fishermen either driven out of business or paid to destroy their vessels.
Survivors had looked forward to regaining their lost fisheries after the vote to Leave the European Union back in 2016 but, despite EU loyalists having repeatedly played down the economic importance of fishing, the bloc has been fighting tooth and nail to retain its current control of Britain’s waters, threatening to refuse a trade deal if they do not get it.
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