Management of the Island’s territorial waters and exports of shellfish and fish to France have been a key issue during Brexit negotiations for both the UK and Jersey.
A key concern for Jersey exporters has been maintaining tariff-free trade with the EU, while local fishermen have called for the Island to take more control over its territorial waters, where fishing rights are currently shared with foreign vessels.
Tariff-free trade with the EU is currently guaranteed for Jersey through Protocol 3 of the UK’s accession agreement to the trading bloc, but this will fall away once the Brexit transition period ends on
31 December.
Yesterday during the government’s Beyond Brexit webinar, Environment Minister John Young said that maintaining this arrangement was a key goal and an outcome on the matter could be imminent.
‘We are seeking to try to retain the position that we have now under Protocol 3, as best we can. But Protocol 3 is gone from
1 January,’ he said.
‘What we are seeking to make sure is that our fishing and agriculture industries have access to markets in the EU, where the vast majority of our [fisheries] produce is exported.
‘So, it would need to be equivalent access and that means, of course, tariff-free trade. Obviously that’s what we have sought to maintain.
‘We won’t know until probably, I think, the 25th or over the weekend whether or not what we’re seeking to achieve is successful.’
The issue of fishing rights recently sparked friction between the UK and Jersey, with Westminster threatening to pass laws for the Island to ‘meet international obligations’, should the States not be inclined to do so.
External Relations Minister Ian Gorst called the move ‘unconstitutional’ and said that the UK and Jersey did have different strategies in their fisheries negotiations.
‘One of the critical areas that the UK continues to negotiate is around access to waters,’ he said yesterday.
‘And I think that’s where the focus of the political side of the negotiations is going to be over the next few days, while the officials consider the legal texts.
‘For us, the fundamentally important point is sustainability [of fishing stocks] in our waters. And there needs to be some changes to ensure this sustainability.
‘But equally there needs to be economic sustainability for our fishing community, that’s both fishing and the aquaculture parts of the industry.
‘We recognise that it’s important that we continue to negotiate with those principal points in mind.
‘For the UK they are possibly in a slightly different position of thinking and wish to secure, as the most important policy output, management of their own waters.’
