Considering the significance of historic and traditional fishing rights in today’s law of the sea, illustrated with the post-Brexit fisheries legal regime.

Abstract

The starting point for this master thesis is the question of the role that tradition plays in fishing and how it can be translated into general international law. Fisheries activities have been carried out throughout history, however on a smaller and less industrial scale than nowadays. The issue of fishing practices is parallel to the extension of coastal States’ sovereignty and jurisdiction over large parts of what used to be the high seas. Thus, access to fisheries resources or allocation of fishing opportunities have become central questions over time. Maritime areas that used to be governed by the freedom of fishing may now find themselves under the control of coastal States. This could be an issue for fishermen from a certain State who traditionally fished in an area that now belongs to another State. There is a need in this case to secure these practices on which local communities’ livelihoods rely. This could be done through the recognition of historic or traditional fishing rights. In relation to these considerations on historic and traditional fishing rights, it is interesting to analyze whether an event such as Brexit could mean their revival, if it is to be assumed that these rights were overtaken by treaties about fisheries to which the UK is a party. The referendum held on 23 June 2016 that settled for the exit of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) created great uncertainty. At the time when this thesis was drafted, no agreement on fisheries had been found, even if the UK had already officially left the EU on 31 January 2020. Application of EU law continues; however, questions about future relations remain, after years of free and mutual access to fisheries resources in the UK’s and other EU Member States’ waters. Even if restrictions on the access to these resources existed before Brexit in order to guarantee a certain level of sovereignty to the UK, there shall be in the future even greater control by the British authorities over their own waters and fisheries resources. Following these considerations, questions arise that will serve as a breadcrumb trail throughout this work. First, are historic and traditional fishing rights of any relevance in the current international legal order or could they have been overtaken by an always expanding importance of treaties and other written agreements? Second, could the uncertainties arisen after Brexit, be partly solved through a recourse to these rights in order to preserve the interests of local fishing communities or should other preserving mechanisms be taken into consideration?