Lecture summary: With the EU demand for continued access to the UK's exclusive economic zone for its fishing vessels seemingly the main outstanding condition for a trade agreement with the UK, this presentation first extracts from the eponymous White Paper and Bill [Act] a number of international legal issues that they raise, before moving on to further matters given only sketchy treatment in, or omitted altogether from, those documents, on which a firmer position ought to have been taken. Lastly, a new problem apparent for the first time in the Bill is discussed: navigational freedom of foreign fishing vessels in the UK EEZ, and a missed opportunity to legislate a related evidential presumption that would assist future prosecutions for illegal fishing.
Professor Andrew Serdy is Professor of the Public International Law of the Sea at the University of Southampton.
LCIL International Law Centre Podcast