Sir Keir Starmer has signalled he is ready to fight EU demands to lift tough post-Brexit environment rules in the UK even if it risks his “reset” with Brussels.
The Prime Minister said the Government would be “keeping to our commitments” after the EU announced it would take the UK to court over the ban on the fishing of sand eels in the North Sea.
Introduced by the Conservatives, the ban is backed by the RSPB to ensure endangered puffins’ major food source is not overfished in a way that would threaten the bird’s survival even further.
The EU on Friday said it would request effective court judgment on the ban after loud complaints from the French and Danish fishing industries, which previously caught hundreds of thousands of tonnes of the fish in UK waters every year.
The escalation in the row over the sand eels, which has rumbled on for months, threatens to derail Starmer’s Brexit “reset” as the EU is thought to want concessions on fishing as a price the UK will need to pay to get the deals the Prime Minister wants on trade and security.
Asked by reporters at the Commonwealth heads of government summit in Samoa on Saturday night whether he could commit to maintaining the ban or if he would lift it to smooth the passage of his reset, Starmer said the UK would be “keeping to our commitments”. i understands that this refers to the previous government’s decision to protect seabirds and the marine environment.
The Prime Minister said: “Well, look, wherever we make commitments, we’re keeping to our commitments.
“So we intend to follow through on the commitments that we’ve made.”
It came after the European Commission on Friday said it was requesting an arbitration tribunal to rule on whether the UK was breaching the Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) with the ban.
The request came after the previous Tory government repeatedly rebuffed EU calls for the ban to be lifted and after subsequent consultations between the two sides since Labour came to power in the election failed to find a mutually agreeable solution.
If an arbitration panel found against the UK and the Government failed to comply with its ruling, Brussels could retaliate with tariffs on British exports and other measures.
The Commission said: “When it comes to managing shared resources, all decisions taken by the EU or the UK must be non-discriminatory, proportionate to the objectives and based on the best available scientific evidence.
“The EU and the UK set fishing opportunities for sand eel on the basis of state-of-the art independent advice from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, which allows for harvesting fish stocks at levels that allows them to reproduce at their maximum capacity and maintaining healthy population levels.
“The EU is committed to promoting environmental, social and economic sustainability. It acts to protect and restore marine ecosystems for sustainable and resilient fisheries under the common fisheries policy and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and in line with its commitments under the TCA.”