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The Svalbard Zone is a 200 nautical mile fish protection zone around the shores of Svalbard. In this case, the EU does not recognize Norwegian control over fish stocks. Until next year, Norway will continue to give away a 34,864 tonnes of cod fishery to the EU in the Svalbard area, as well as 7,500 tonnes of other fish, Nationen writes.
This is about half of what Norway catches in the area in a normal year.
Fisheries Minister Odd Emil Ingebrigtsen (H) confirms that this is not an exchange of quotas for the fish we deliver from the Svalbard area.
Vessels from Norway, Russia, the EU and the Faroe Islands have obtained permission to fish for cod in the protection zone. The EU will get 27,295 tonnes of cod here in 2020. This is not part of a quota change and is based on catching the EU countries before the zone was established, says Ingebrigtsen.
Norway hopes that giving away these fees will have a conflict-reducing effect, according to lead researcher Andreas Østhagen of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute.
– It is a way to avoid creating more conflict than is considered necessary, Østhagen tells Nationen.
He has investigated fisheries and security policy around Svalbard and the Upper North and says Norway fears a conflict over the right to control the economic zone around Svalbard.
– Norway fears that an EU country will bring the issue of the Norwegian fisheries protection zone and continental shelf to the Court of Justice of the European Communities in The Hague, and that we will lose. This is probably the worst Norway can imagine, Østhagen says.
