Fishing rights and structural changes in the UK fishing industry

The United Kingdom has a long history of fishing, reflecting its position as an island with a relatively long coastline and proximity to the productive fishing grounds of the European continental shelf (notably the North Sea, the English Channel and the West of Scotland). The UK’s fisheries are heterogeneous and this is reflected in its complex fleet structure. The shape of the modern UK fleet is the product of technological and market changes together with political developments, in particular the loss of access to traditional distant-water grounds (particularly Iceland and Greenland) in the 1970s and the development of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) by the European Community (EC) (which the UK joined in 1972). Under the CFP (see below) there have been national quotas for most stocks since the early 1980s, coupled with a succession of fleet-reduction programmes (the so-called MAGPs) or multi-annual guidance programmes.