EU politics: bully-boy "Europe"
Friday 2 August 2013
To our eternal shame, the decision has been welcomed by the Scottish government and by thecriminal enterprise otherwise known as the Scottish Pelagic Fishermen's Association (SPFA), after Scottish skippers demanded that tough action be taken.
What the "colleagues" don't realise is that their action will probably backfire on them. The market for North-East Atlantic fisheries product is now global and, if the Europeans are going to block Faroese products, there will be a ready market for them in Asia and especially in China and Japan.
Furthermore, a significant amount of processing is already done in China and the EU will be hard put to it to distinguish product of Faroese origin, when it comes into the Single Market with Chinese labelling.
And, in any case, China can simply manage product distribution so that the "right" product ends up in the right markets, without affecting overall trade volumes, especially as southern Pacific stocks are under stress.
Thus, while the EU may see itself as flexing is muscles – albeit against one of its smallest neighbours – the end result is likely to be a weakening of its global trading position, and a determination by many traders to avoid doing business with the EU. No one likes a bully, and that goes for trading blocs as well as individuals.
The perverse thing is that the Faroese have a much sounder record for preserving fish stocks than the EU, and the EU is fundamentally in the wrong by seeking to dictate to the Faroese islanders what their quotas should be in their own waters. Memories are long and the EU will not be easily forgiven for the action it has taken.
Faroese prime minister Kaj Leo Holm Johannesen already regards the EU action as an "abuse of power" and these sanctions are not going to change his mind. "It is short-sighted and ill-considered of the EU to take such an unjustifiable step against one of its nearest European neighbours and partners", he says.
"The Faroe Islands may be small, but we are strategically placed as an important stakeholder in shared pelagic fish stocks in the Northeast Atlantic. It is difficult to see what purpose these measures serve other than to protect fishing industry interests within the EU".
And just to confirm how this is going to backfire, Johannesen adds, "The Faroese industry is already adapting its business and developing new markets elsewhere around the world". There will, he says, "be significant negative impacts on traditional business related to herring and mackerel between the Faroes and the EU".
One of these days, I suppose, we will learn what Mr Johannesen already knows: that to be on the same side as the EU is to be on the wrong side of the argument.
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Richard North 02/08/2013
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