Fish and chip shops facing shortages and job losses unless UK strikes new deal with Greenland

Fish and chip shops could face supply shortages and even lose thousands of jobs if the UK does not secure a new fishing deal with Greenland as well as the EU, the industry has warned.  

The self-governing overseas Danish territory has a deal to trade its plentiful fishing stocks with the EU, but once the transition period ends on 31 December and Britain quits the bloc, a new arrangement will have to be struck.  

Some 10 per cent of the fish supplied to England comes from Greenland’s waters and cannot be easily replaced, the National Federation of Fish Friers (NFFF) has warned.  

“The British fleet cannot be expected to catch all the fish we need. Greenland’s fish is a premium product and supplies some 10 per cent of fish to the south of England,” Andrew Crook from the association told The Sun.

“We must not let a deal slip through the net.”  

Fish and chips remains one of the country’s favourite takeaways, with the industry wrapping up 382m servings a year according to the NFFF. Although £1.2bn is spent on fish and chips each year, the fishing industry remains a tiny fraction of the UK economy, contributing approximately 0.1% of the nation’s GDP.

Despite this, fishing rights and quotas have been one of the major sticking points in negotiations for a trade deal between Britain and the EU, with talks still continuing despite the 31 December deadline being only weeks away.  

Currently, under Brussels’s Common Fisheries Policy, European fishing fleets have unlimited access to UK waters apart from the first 12 nautical miles from the coast.  

There are also annual quotas about how much of each species of fish are allowed to be caught, with each member state receiving a proportion of the total quota to be divided among its domestic fleet.  

The government, backed by much of the fishing industry which tends to view the Common Fisheries Policy as unfair, wants to restore more control over its waters and only grant more limited access to foreign boats to fish in British seas.

Although Greenland is an overseas territory belonging to Denmark, an EU member, the sparsely-populated island itself voted to leave the EU in a referendum in 1982, although it did secure a free-trade treaty with the bloc three years later, swapping more limited fishing quotas in return for funding.  

Exporting fish remains the bedrock of Greenland’s economy and some of its largest firms have the UK as their main customer.  

Although Britain is a major fishing nation, most of the catch is sold overseas and most of the fish eaten in the UK is imported from elsewhere. Hence, securing continued tariff-free access to bring in fish from other countries such as Greenland is as important as renegotiating quotas and access to British waters.  

Greenland’s ministers have said previously they are keen to retain tariff-free export access to the UK after it leaves the EU.  

Although no formal trade deal with the Arctic territory has yet been agreed, the two nations did sign a memorandum of understanding last week in which they pledged to co-operate more on fisheries management.