The EU has employed an incorrect method for calculating national quotas for North Sea herring since Brexit, resulting in inequitable shares among Member States and a loss of relative stability.

This is the conclusion of a new joint paper by DPPO and DFPO, which shows that the error concerns the EU’s application of the Brexit-related quota transfer to the UK.

The paper argues that the mistake has affected all EU countries and has caused significant imbalances, including a 10.97% drop in Denmark’s quota between 2021 and 2025.

Incorrect post-Brexit method

According to the document, the Commission’s “present” calculation method fails on two points.

First, it reduces only the variable component of each Member State’s herring quota, leaving the constant component unchanged.

This means that some countries, such as Belgium, do not contribute proportionally to the Brexit-related transfer.

Misalignment with stock-level rules

The second issue concerns how the EU applies the UK quota increase under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). For other stocks, the EU adjusts quotas separately for each management area.

But for North Sea herring, the Commission applied the reduction to the combined quota for Subarea 4 and Division 7.d, even though the TCA sets different UK shares for each area (32.32% in Subarea 4 and 12.35% in Division 7.d from 2025 onwards).

The paper argues that this inconsistency produces distorted results and violates standard practice.

The proposed fix shows significant shifts

The authors present a “revised” method that corrects both errors. This alternative approach includes the constant quota share in the calculation and separates reductions between Subarea 4 and Division 7.d.

In Table 3 on page 3, Denmark’s total quota for 2021–2025 under the revised method is 308,865 tonnes, 6,358 tonnes more than under the current system. Other Member States also show differences, though none as significant as Denmark’s.

The paper concludes that the present method has “changed the relative stability between EU27 Member States” and calls for urgent correction and compensation to restore fairness.