This hasn't been covered outside of the fisheries press, but the first fishing quota for 2021 has been agreed with the UK as an independent coastal state. So, was control 'taken back'? Will Dan Hannan be basking in fish entrails? I'm afraid that requires a bit of an explainer... https://twitter.com/EU_MARE/status/1319706912695422977

Blue whiting is one of the largest fish populations in Europe by distribution and quantity. Annual quota negotiations involve not just the EU, but also Norway, Faroes, Russia, and Greenland. Previously five states would negotiate, but now the UK has joined as a sixth state.

This process of arriving at a 'Coastal States agreement' for blue whiting (also mackerel & AS herring) is a little different from the EU-exclusive fish populations, but the UK govt has pointed to this arrangement as a post-Brexit model so the story here is doubly important.

The scientific advice from ICES was for a blue whiting quota of ≤929,292 tonnes in order to fish sustainably and the Coastal States agreement says exactly that: 929,292 tonnes. But this should *not* be celebrated as "one down". That last sentence, printed each year, is key.

While this is a joint agreement, but the actual quotas are set by each state unilaterally. What happens when you sum all the unilateral quotas together? Well, here's the announcement of an agreement last year (left) and the combined unilateral quotas (right). That's +27%.

So we have a joint agreement for 2021 but not the unilateral quotas. Previously the UK received 18% of the EU blue whiting quota and ~4% of the total (depending on the unilateral quotas). Will the UK decide it wants a larger share of the agreed quota? How will other states react?

We have clear precedent for this, for example these statements on the 2019 quota. Norway wants a higher share, but rather than accommodating, Iceland also raises theirs. So the UK can say it will follow advice on quota, but this means very little without an agreement on shares.

While many (myself included, see "Landing the blame" reports) have criticised the EU for setting quotas above scientific advice for EU-exclusive populations, the quotas from this joint agreement & unilateral quota approach are set even further above advice https://theecologist.org/2018/mar/09/why-brexit-could-lead-overfishing-detriment-everyone

The 2021 blue whiting agreement just follows the same pattern of unilateral quotas that will bust scientific advice and result in overfishing. What should alarm everyone is that if the UK and the EU can't agree on quota shares in ~6 weeks it'll be this model x100 fish populations

Update: All the above, but for Atlanto-Scandian herring https://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/sites/fisheries/files/docs/body/2021-coastal-states-fisheries-consultations-herring_en.pdf