Macron thwarts UK over fish – and this is only the beginning

Yahoo

19-05-2025

Brussels has landed a whopper of a 'Brexit reset deal' on fish, securing 12 years access to British waters.
It's a significant victory for the European Union, a humiliating surrender from Sir Keir Starmer, and yet another example of Brexit-voting British fishermen being thrown under the bus.
Britain originally pushed for a one-year deal, setting up annual negotiations on fishing rights to replace the five-year pact struck in the Brexit trade negotiations, which expires next year.
That was the plan when the UK conceded to EU pressure in the final hours of those painful, high stakes talks that brought a deal signed on Dec 30 2020.
But once Brussels has a concession, it never willingly surrenders it. Instead it uses it as a foothold to push for more. It demanded five years, which, after some haggling, brought Britain to make a compromise offer of three years.
By Sunday, 24 hours before Monday's UK-EU summit, Britain had moved to four years.
European Commission negotiators, under pressure from EU capitals, especially Paris, were turning the screws.
If Britain wanted to limit fish to four years, then the Swiss-style veterinary deal to boost trade would be limited to four years as well.
Tying the two deals together would make it much harder to claw back more fish for British boats in the future.
It's an established Commission tactic; the first Brexit fishing deal expires at the same time as an agreement on continued UK access to the EU electricity market.
The British wanted the veterinary deal to be kept permanent. Otherwise its decision to sacrifice Brexit freedoms and align with EU plant and animal health rules would look very weak. It would undermine the Government's claims it will bring economic growth and lower grocery prices if the deal was temporary.
Experts believe that the deal will bring a 0.1 per cent boost to GDP, which seems a moderate return for such a concession. But the deal will make it easier to export British fish to the EU, which is the major market for the UK, which exports most of what it catches.
With the summit hours away, and Sir Keir hoping for a third deal with a major partner in recent weeks, the UK was in a weak negotiating position.
This was the moment the EU was waiting for as the talks entered the endgame. The clock was ticking, as Michel Barnier used to say.
The EU could easily walk away with no deal, but that was not an option for a Prime Minister bleeding support to Reform UK.
If Britain wanted no deadline on the veterinary deal, it would have to pay big for it in fish, three times as much as it had offered.
In the wee small hours of the morning, Britain surrendered and agreed it would last 12 years.
At this stage it is unclear whether this will mean fish catches on the same terms as the expiring deal, which would be an EU victory, or potentially allow even more.
What is clear is that Sir Keir has surrendered one of the few points of leverage the UK had in its dealings with the EU, where fish is politically very important, until 2038.
Experts believe that the veterinary deal will bring a 0.1 per cent boost to GDP, which seems a moderate return for such a major concession.
The reset has also secured a defence pact with the EU and paved the way for UK involvement in EU rearmament programmes after Emmanuel Macron's France insisted it was conditional on a deal on fish.
The EU's last minute ambush in the dying hours of the reset negotiations has paid off in spades.
Brussels was always confident it would. There is precedent. The same thing happened during the last hours of the Brexit trade negotiations.
Britain under Boris Johnson also caved on fish to get a trade deal, that prevented an economically devastating no deal and a return to World Trade Organisation terms.
Mr Johnson at least had the excuse that he got a trade deal in return, rather than a reset agreement that merely tinkers around the edge of one already weighted in the EU's favour.
The negotiations with the EU were always going to be an uphill battle. Brussels knows that Britain needs the deal more than it does and that size matters.
Its tough negotiation stance, which has secured a promise for more talks on youth mobility, is based on the belief that the heft of its Single Market with 460 million consumers will always tell in the end.
That conviction was strengthened in these new talks because the UK does not have the shelter of a trading bloc at a time when Donald Trump is threatening to trigger a global trade war.
The threat of Russia has also weakened Britain's hand, although it made the defence pact easier to do and accelerated the reset.
Britain has given away an awful lot for some modest gains.
Brussels is ruthless about negotiating in the EU's own interest, and its own interest alone.
Sir Keir, a Remainer who once pushed for a second referendum, might have hoped he'd be given an easier ride by the European Commission than the Tories.
In the end it was a case of plus ça change – the more things change, the more things stay the same.
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