In London, on 9 March 1964, Belgium, Denmark, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom sign the Fisheries Convention (London Fisheries Convention), together with a Protocol of Provisional Application. The official texts are English and French; the depositary is the Government of the United Kingdom. The Convention is registered in the UNTS as No. 8432 (vol. 581).

The preamble states the desire to define a fisheries regime of a permanent character. Article 1 recognises each party’s right to establish the regime in Articles 2–6, while retaining any more favourable regime already applied when the Convention opened for signature. Article 2 gives the coastal State the exclusive right to fish and exclusive fisheries jurisdiction within a six-mile belt measured from the baseline of its territorial sea.

Article 3: between six and twelve miles, the right to fish belongs to the coastal State and to those Contracting Parties whose vessels habitually fished in that belt between 1 January 1953 and 31 December 1962. Article 4 bars directing fishing effort toward substantially different stocks or grounds. Article 5 allows non-discriminatory coastal-State regulation, with prior information and consultation.

Article 6 requires straight baselines to accord with general international law and the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Territorial Sea. Article 7, for opposite or adjacent coasts, sets the equidistant median line absent agreement. Entry into force is on 15 March 1966, after eight ratifications.

The Convention superseded, among its parties, the logic of the 1888 North Sea Fisheries Convention (access up to three miles), which the United Kingdom had denounced in 1963. The EU Common Fisheries Policy later largely overtook it for members; the United Kingdom gave notice of denunciation on 3 July 2017, effective 31 December 2020.

The London Fisheries Convention of 9 March 1964 remains the classic instrument of the 6/12-mile fisheries regime for Western European Atlantic and North Sea waters in the pre-CFP period.

Image: fishing boat, North Sea; Wikimedia Commons. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: Fisheries Convention. Treaty text: Fisheries Convention, Done at London, 9 March 1964 (UNTS 581, I-8432).