From 28 to 30 January 2025 the UK and the EU were in an arbitration hearing in the Hague. The hearing concerned the UK and Scottish governments’ decision to ban sandeel fishing in certain areas of the Dogger Bank in UK waters, on the grounds that overfishing was damaging the seabirds and marine life that depended on sandeels for food, such as Puffin, Arctic Tern and Kittiwake.
The EU challenged the UK and Scottish bans asserting that they breached the terms of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, damaging EU, principally Danish, fisheries that harvest sandeel to turn them into fishmeal and fish oil to use in salmon farms.
The decision by the EU to refer this matter to the first arbitration under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement significantly raised the stakes of this dispute, which has carried on over several years, as UK governments have sought to restrict the North Sea sandeel fishery in response to evidence of its impacts on other marine life, while the EU has fiercely resisted those efforts.
The UK had felt sufficiently strongly about the conservation arguments that it had not allocated sandeel quota to its own vessels after the regular fishery negotiations. An article in The Fishing Daily on 24 March 2023 noted that -
“The outcome of the negotiations resulted in the UK accepting a 2.97% share of the sandeel quota, which equates to 5.773 tonnes, and the EU taking a TAC [Total Allowable Catch] for 2023 of 188,594 tonnes.”
Whether or not the sandeel fishery is sustainable, it must also be a question whether having the EU take 97% of the fish in UK waters is politically sustainable.
As a sample of the opposing arguments, the EU’s case stated -
“In bringing this dispute, the EU does not call into question the right of the UK to adopt fisheries management measures in pursuit of legitimate conservation objectives. Like the UK, the EU is fully committed to the conservation of marine living resources and the management of fisheries resources.
Rather, this dispute is about the UK’s failure to abide by its commitments under the TCA to apply evidence-based, proportionate and non discriminatory measures when restricting the right granted to EU vessels of full access to UK waters to fish for sandeel.”
The UK, by contrast argued that -
“The EU considers that the UK should continue to permit vessels from EU Member States to engage in industrial trawling of sandeel in UK waters, so that factories in the EU can continue to turn those sandeel into fishmeal.
…The UK and the EU are, under their own regulatory frameworks, both required to pursue Good Environmental Status. Although the North Sea ecosystem is by any objective measure not at Good Environmental Status, the EU remains acutely focussed on maximising fishing yields pursuant to its Common Fisheries Policy. The UK in exercise of its regulatory autonomy as emphasised by Articles 493 and 494 of the TCA, and in accordance with other principles identified in Article 494 of the TCA is focussed on protecting the ecosystems and preserving marine biological diversity.”
For an excellent and balanced summary of the background to the dispute, see House of Commons Library, The UK-EU dispute over sandeels, Elena Ares, Stefano Fella, 28 January 2025.
Photo credit: Glen Hooper on Unsplash