Starmer surrenders EU access to British fishing waters for 12 years

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19-05-2025

Sir Keir Starmer has given European fishermen access to British waters for 12 years to land his Brexit reset deal.
British and European negotiators have reached a 'fish for food' deal granting EU fishermen rights until 2038 in return for an agreement to boost trade.
The two sides have also struck deals on a defence pact and youth mobility, while Britain has agreed to align with EU plant and animal health laws and to be subject to European Court of Justice decisions over them.
In a win for British travellers, the EU will also allow UK passport-holders to use e-gates at European airports, which will ease queues.
The Telegraph has obtained a leaked copy of the full deal between the EU and Britain.
The agreement, struck in the early hours of Monday morning, will be signed off by the ambassadors of the bloc's 27 member states in Brussels before a UK-EU summit in London.
Fishing has become a totemic issue between Britain and the EU since the 2016 referendum.
Prior to Brexit, the Commons Fisheries Policy gave European fishing vessels access to UK waters more than 12 nautical miles from the coast.
Boris Johnson's Brexit deal reduced the annual quota that could be caught by EU fishermen by 25 per cent, but set a cut-off date for that arrangement in 2026.
Sir Keir has now agreed to extend the quota of 75 per cent of pre-Brexit fishing rights until 2038, in an unprecedented concession to the EU.
'We note the political agreements leading to full reciprocal access to waters to fish until 30 June 2038 and extending energy cooperation on a continuous basis,' the leaked version of the deal says.
In return, the EU has agreed that the Swiss-style agreement that Britain requested on food and veterinary standards will not be time-limited.
It means the UK will be subject to 'dynamic alignment' with EU standards on food, which will ease customs checks. Ministers also argue that the deal will bring down the price of food and increase UK exports to the European continent.
However, it also means that the UK has agreed to become an EU 'rule-taker', in a significant reversal of the Brexit process, which removed the role of Brussels in setting food standards and extracted the UK from the jurisdiction of the ECJ.
Sir Keir's team asked that the arrangement on food and veterinary standards is not time-limited, which means Britain will not be required to renegotiate market access in future.
But EU negotiators said that in order to secure an unlimited time period on food, the UK should extend the length of the fishing rights deal from four years to 12 years.
Labour's decision to concede that point was met with fury on Monday, amid claims it will kill off the economy of coastal communities.
The veterinary deal will make it easier to export British fish to its major market the EU. And the UK's fishing industry exports most of what it catches.
Although fishing represents a tiny proportion of the UK economy, a concession over rights to British waters presents a political challenge to the Labour Government.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, told The Telegraph that it would be 'the end of the industry with no new investment', and described Britain as 'an island without a fishing industry'.
Some of the fishing towns most affected by the deal are also marginal constituencies between Labour and Reform. In 2024, Mr Farage's party finished second in Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, and won the mayoralty of Greater Lincolnshire earlier this month.
Victoria Atkins, the shadow environment secretary, said the deal was 'far worse than we anticipated' and argued that 'Labour have taken the view that our UK fishing industry can be sacrificed'.
Monday's deal is expected to include a range of new partnerships with the EU, dubbed Labour's Brexit 'reset'.
It will include a new defence and security pact under which Britain and the bloc will cooperate to rearm against Russia, in the wake of the US's plans to withdraw forces from Europe.
A defence deal will mean British firms can win contracts from the European Commission's new €150 billion (£126 billion) Security Action For Europe (Safe) fund, which will be used to bolster the military strength of member states.
Sir Keir and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, will also announce plans for a youth mobility scheme to allow under-30s to travel between the UK and EU for work and study more easily.
The final arrangements for the scheme have not yet been negotiated, but ministers insist it will be capped and time-limited, and will not see Britain return to free movement with the EU.
However, that plan has already been met with backlash from some Labour MPs, who say it will undermine Sir Keir's pledge to 'significantly' reduce net migration.
Other elements of the deal include a promise to align carbon trading and electricity markets, cooperation between anti-drug agencies.
There is also further law enforcement collaboration on fingerprint databases – which will give British investigators access to non-EU biometric data held by the bloc.
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