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Politico (11 August 2021)

BY BARBARA MOENS AND GABRIELA GALINDO

Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago that is home to more polar bears than people, is poised to become the scene of a cod war between Norway and the EU. 

In the coming weeks, EU fishing vessels risk being seized in waters off Svalbard and their owners prosecuted because Norway says they have used up their quotas. The debate over permitted catches is an inflammatory legacy of the way the EU reallocated fishing quotas around the Continent after Brexit, and the Norwegians argue that Brussels illegally awarded itself a larger trawl of Svalbard's fish than it was entitled to. 

“​​There is no basis in international law for the European Union to set quotas in Norwegian waters,” Audun Halvorsen, state secretary to the Norwegian minister for foreign affairs, told POLITICO.

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