Casting a shadow over these talks for years now has been the European Commission’s obsession with "saving" cod in EU waters. This resulted some years ago in the establishment of the cod recovery plan, which has wreaked havoc among fishermen.

Originally set up in 2004, it was replaced with a revised plan in November 2008. It sets totally unrealistic annual decreases in cod fishing mortality and fishing effort -- in fact fishing effort in the UK North Sea and west of Scotland whitefish fleet has been cut by around 70 percent since 2001 and there have also been significant reductions in the Irish Sea.

Yet,