ABSTRACT
This chapter follows the Europeans' work with the fisheries issue from the early 1960s as they designed and defended an alternative communitarian fishery policy, pushed it through the domestic machinery, and applied it to the complex multilateral negotiations between the applicants and the European Communities (EC). It reconstructs a specific part of the enlargement negotiations between 1970 and 1972, from the diplomats' point of view, in order to capture the 'entangled exchanges' between inside and outside. Seemingly, the establishment line was sunk on the very day the negotiations commenced. Discussing the matter in late August 1970, the government now chose an alternate path to the establishment line. Against the recommendation of the Market Committee, Minister of Fisheries Einar Hole Moxnes secured a majority for 'negotiating on the basis of continued prohibition for foreign fishermen to fish within the national fishery limits'.
