The Pulse of Scottish Fishing Reveals the True Cost of 'Simplifying' Trade with the EU
By Martín Soler
The Scottish Fishermen’s Federation (SFF) has escalated its tone with a direct warning to UK Minister for EU Relations, Nick Thomas-Symonds: be cautious about any sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement that could push the UK back into the European regulatory orbit in fishing. The industry isn’t simply reacting to a stray comment or an academic discussion; it is interpreting the trade negotiations as a mechanism for the distribution of value and power.
Timing matters. The fishing architecture of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) allows EU fleets access to UK waters until June 30, 2026, and that deadline opens a window for rewriting rules, quotas, and certainty. There’s a second layer of pressure, less visible to the general public but more painful for operations: new EU regulatory requirements starting January 10, 2026, for UK vessels fishing in community waters (marking of passive gear, electronic reports "lance by lance," and increased frequency of VMS positioning in restricted areas). The UK regulator itself, via Sean Douglas from the Marine Management Organisation (MMO), acknowledged that the late notice adds a burden and called for pragmatism in implementation.
This overlap of deadlines and rules isn't just an anecdote. It’s the board where a very concrete decision is made: whether the value of "less friction" at the border translates to margin and stability for fish and export companies in the UK, or whether that benefit ends up being “paid for” with concessions on access, regulatory dependence, and permanent costs.
An SPS Agreement Isn’t Bureaucracy: It’s a Lever of Power on the Water
In theory, an SPS serves to align sanitary and phytosanitary standards to reduce inspections, delays, and paperwork in the trade of animal and plant products. In practice, when it overlaps with a sector like fishing—where the critical asset isn't a factory but a regulated natural resource—an SPS becomes a bargaining chip.
The SFF fears exactly that arithmetic: what is marketed as "trade facilitation" may actually be a mechanism for indirectly reintroducing elements of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy in the form of conditions. The political precedent is there: the TCA already granted continued access for EU fleets until 2026, and the sector was dissatisfied with the distribution. In fact, the 2020 agreement established a gradual return of 25% of EU quotas to the UK over five and a half years, which collectively resulted in less than 10% increase in UK’s total quota across 87 shared populations, concentrating the largest gains in western mackerel, North Sea herring, and sole.
In parallel, the licensing system was real and massive: in 2021, the UK government issued over 1,800 licenses to EU vessels to fish in UK waters. That fact alone explains why “ceding access” is not an abstract concept for the Scottish fleet: it represents direct competition for a biologically limited resource, with an immediate impact on revenue per available ton.
The tension is distributive. A successful SPS can return value to exporters in the form of lower logistical costs and greater delivery predictability. But if the price of that friction reduction is increased regulatory dependence or weakening the UK’s ability to impose conditions on access to its waters, the sector perceives that it is financing the benefits of others. It’s not an ideological preference but a defense of the only asset that cannot be “imported”: the right to fish in an economic zone.
Operational Costs are Already Rising: The EU Transferred Complexity to the Deck of the Boat
While London and Brussels discuss large packages, the real cost is materializing in additional tasks, software, labeling, and reporting. The EU established new rules effective January 10, 2026, for UK vessels operating in community waters: mandatory marking of passive gear with durable and non-removable labels carrying the vessel identifier; detailed electronic reports “lance by lance” for vessels 12 meters or longer under Regulation (EU) 2023/2842; and an increase in VMS monitoring intensity, with reports every 30 minutes in restricted areas like the Dogger Bank (under Commission Regulation 2025/2191) and closures of sensitive habitats in Ireland (under Council Regulation 2019/1241), even with an additional buffer.
The strategic reading is clear: when one actor controls access to the market (waters and ports), they can design “compliance costs” that do not appear as tariffs but work as equivalent economic friction. It’s not a moral judgment; it’s how cross-border supply chains are governed when tariffs are politically undesirable.
In this context, Sean Douglas's statement (MMO) about the burden of late notice is relevant because it validates the operational problem: it’s not just stricter rules; they come with timelines that complicate technological adaptation and training. The MMO and Defra promised support, mentioning updates for VMS software with a provider (AST) as well as helplines. This mitigates but does not eliminate the more structural aspect: once the cost is established as a “new standard,” it becomes permanent and reconfigures competitiveness.
For a startup, this is the kind of regulatory change that creates immediate opportunities (compliance-tech, report automation, industrial labeling, maritime telemetry) but also reveals a classic risk: building a business whose demand depends on friction imposed by third parties. If tomorrow the scheme changes due to a political agreement, the market shrinks. The smart entrepreneur in this space doesn’t sell “software to comply with rule X,” they sell reductions in operational costs and traceability that also enhance efficiency, safety, and access to markets.
The 2026 Deadline is a Rent Renegotiation, Not a Formality
June 30, 2026, marks the expiration of the fishery chapter of the TCA and, with it, the current balance of access and distribution. From there, dynamics may shift to annual negotiations on 87 shared stocks, unless a multi-year framework is agreed. The EU, according to analyses included in the coverage, seeks multi-year stability to reduce fleet uncertainty. The UK has yet to publicly crystallize an alternative design that closes the loop between regulatory sovereignty, sector profitability, and access to markets.
Here the typical blind spot in trade negotiations emerges: the "aggregate benefit" is discussed while the distribution is hidden. An SPS can generate macro gains (coverage mentions a potential estimate of 1-2% boost to the trade of animal and plant products and 0.5% to GDP), but those aggregated numbers don’t reveal who wins and who pays. In fishing, the one who pays is usually the one most tied to the physical asset and least diversified: the fleet and coastal communities.
Moreover, there are lateral conflicts that act as levers of pressure. The EU initiated legal actions over the UK’s ban on sandeel fishing in its waters, primarily affecting Danish vessels, with an arbitration ruling expected. Beyond the outcome, the message is that environmental and fisheries management decisions are becoming negotiating material. When the natural resource and its protection become judicialized, the cost of insisting on autonomy rises.
The risk for the UK isn’t to "formally return" to a regime but to end up in a gray area where access to the European market is bought with regulatory alignment and access to waters becomes a bargaining chip. In that gray area, investment stalls: no one modernizes the fleet, processes, or technology with certainty if the underlying asset—quota and access—gets reopened with each political cycle.
The Opportunity for Startups Lies in Reducing Friction Without Charging It as a Toll
This story is classified as startups for a useful reason: the best opportunities emerge when the incumbent gets stuck between regulation, international negotiation, and daily operation. But there are two ways to capture that opportunity.
The first is the "toll" model: selling compliance tools, capturing dependence, and raising prices when customers cannot change. This creates short-term margin and destroys medium-term value: the customer experiences it as a private tax added to the regulatory tax. In a sector with volatility in quotas and costs (fuel, maintenance, crew), that toll ends up being an invitation to disintermediation or cooperative purchases that expel the supplier.
The second is to design products aligned with the operator’s interest. In fishing, adoption happens when software or hardware reduces downtime, enhances safety, decreases reporting errors, and avoids penalties without increasing administrative burdens. If the entrepreneur manages to create less friction and more control for the captain and the owner, the willingness to pay increases without the need to capture rents through coercion.
The EU's changes in logbooks and VMS create a map of solutions: report automation with interfaces designed for the deck, integration with sensors to minimize manual load, compliance management for restricted areas with alerts and evidence, durable labeling with traceability of gear to avoid losses and conflicts. Each of these is a wedge to build exportable products to other maritime markets where traceability is also scaling.
The strategic nuance is not to rely solely on UK-EU friction. The product must serve equally in a broad SPS scenario or a ruptured one. This design avoids the risk of a political agreement turning the market into a temporary anomaly.
The Real Decision is Measured by Who Absorbs the Cost and Who Captures the Upside
The SFF’s letter to Nick Thomas-Symonds signals an industry that does not want “trade facilitation” to be financed by relinquishing control over the scarcest asset. The hard data is that the TCA returned 25% of transitional quotas but only raised British participation by less than 10% of the total in shared stocks, while granting over 1,800 licenses to EU vessels in a single year. With that history, any package promising less friction at the border without explicit safeguards over access and autonomy is interpreted as a transfer of value: the exporter gains speed while the extractive sector pays with uncertainty and competition for its own resource.
In these types of negotiations, sustainable competitive advantage does not arise from "beating" the other party at the table but from building a distribution where the ally also prefers stability. When the benefit of the SPS is captured in the commercial chain while the cost is deposited on the deck of the boat and in access to water, value concentrates at the selling end and gets destroyed at the producing end, and that imbalance ultimately raises the costs across the entire system.
