FISHING VESSEL LICENCING
Latest vessel licensing news from DEFRA
From Anne Freeman | Deputy Director | Domestic Fisheries and Reform| Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs|
All
I’ve just come off a call with the Commission and we’ve agreed that (rather amazingly, thanks to HUGE efforts from the MMO, DAs and Commission), we will be in a position to issue licences to fish in each other’s 12-200nm zones with effect 23:00 31.12.20.
This has been done on the basis of lists that both parties had pre-prepared (drawn up from VMS and other data). So hopefully, the Admins will be doing the appropriate variation an letting the individual vessel owners know. We’ll also be updating websites/putting out a stakeholder bulletin.
It is more complex to work through the 6-12nm issues and so we prioritised 12-200nm. We are also aware we need to get a bit more clarity around NI and the voisinage agreement. We will need to pick these up – probably next week now. So that means no access for the time being to the 6-12nm for our boats into the EU and vice versa.
We put out a high-level press notice about provisional quotas being set, but are still working on the details. More info on that next week too.
Lots of other things to pick up and resolve over the next weeks too.
But wanted to give you a heads up so you can prepare your comms.
Anne