The EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee has published its report highlighting some of the opportunities and challenges related to managing shared fish stocks following the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union.
In withdrawing from the European Union the United Kingdom will withdraw from the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), which has hitherto been the source of fisheries management policy in the UK and the EU. But fish know nothing of political borders and the majority of commercial fish stocks are shared between the UK and the EU or other European coastal states to some degree. Species of these fish may spend different stages of their life cycles in different nations’ Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), and their spawning grounds may be in a different region from that in which they are caught when mature. These stocks are vulnerable to exploitation