January 29, 2020 — With the United Kingdom due to withdraw from the European Union on Friday, 31 January, new legislation has been introduced into U.K. parliament that creates the powers for the country to operate as an independent coastal state and to manage its fish stocks independently.
Beyond delivering a legal guarantee that the United Kingdom will leave the E.U.’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) at the end of the transition period in December 2020, and also ending the automatic rights for E.U. vessels to fish in British waters, the new fisheries bill contains provisions that take into account climate change’s impact on fisheries, as well as the new objective to move towards “climate-smart fishing” in U.K. waters.