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Jersey is prepared to reject any EU-UK trade deal if it doesn’t work for the island, a senior Minister has said.
Specifically addressing a key part of any agreement - the future of Jersey’s territorial waters and who can fish in them - Environment Minister John Young said: “What is absolutely vital for Jersey is that we have the ability to ensure the sustainable management of our marine resources.
“That means that Jersey Ministers alone must be the ultimate decision-makers on the management of those waters.
“That is something that we, as one of the Crown Dependencies, is looking for, and the External Relations Minister has maintained outstandingly good communications with the UK’s Task Force Europe, where our lines of communication have given us blow-by-blow information, which we are not at liberty to publicise due to international protocols.
“At the moment, though, the situation is massively unclear. We have heard see-sawing and conflicting noises from the UK-EU discussions and we remain to see where the deal will land, or won’t land.”
Pictured: Who will be able to fish commercially in Jersey’s waters after 1 January remains unclear.
Deputy Young, however, added that the island had explained its position clearly to the UK and he had not seen any evidence to suggest that Westminster would “sell Jersey down the river."
This was despite the controversial inclusion of a clause in the UK Fisheries Bill giving the UK powers to legislate for the Crown Dependencies without their support, which the Minister said was no reflection on Jersey’s relationship with London.
But he added: “It is paramount that Jersey is able to control and manage our waters ourselves. We have the law, skills, infrastructure and experience in our marine team to do that.
“If there is a deal that works for us, we will be able to manage everything ourselves. The External Relations Minister has been clear that any agreement will be subject to a States decision at a special sitting, which we hope there will be time for.”
Pictured: The Environment Minister said he hadn't seen anything to suggest the UK would "sell Jersey down the river."
Addressing how that uncertainty was affecting the fishing industry, Deputy Young said: “Like everything else around Brexit, there is huge anxiety among people with business interests, including our fishermen.
“The External Relations Minister and I have had a meeting with the chairman of the Jersey Fishermen’s Association [Don Thompson], when we did our best to explain to him what we were able to say. But we are inhibited by protocol because we’re not actually at the table ourselves.”
Speaking to an Environment Scrutiny panel hearing on Tuesday, the minister added that the uncertainty of Brexit, together with the disruption to markets because of the pandemic, had made it a difficult year for the fishing and aquaculture industries, which would have to “reinvent” themselves in the new year, as access to French markets invariably changed.
He said he believed that it would be right to offer financial support, at least in the short term, to the industry to help them cope with the Brexit transition.
“None of the possible outcomes - a deal we agree with, no deal, or a deal we don’t agree with - will put us in as favourable position as we are now, in terms of being able to export produce tariff-free into Europe with a minimum of bureaucracy,” he said.
“Protocol 3 has gone so there are costs and bureaucratic barriers that we will have to deal with - and if there is no deal - tariffs.”
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