France has demanded that the EU must launch legal proceedings against Britain over fishing licenses as President Emmanuel Macron continues to accuse the UK of breaking the Brexit agreement.
The move, announced by France’s European affairs minister on Friday, is the latest over a long-running dispute on fishing licenses for French boats in British waters.
‘In the coming days we will ask the European Commission to launch litigation, a legal procedure, for the licenses we are entitled to,’ Clement Beaune said.
France has demanded that the EU must launch legal proceedings against Britain over fishing licenses. The move, announced by France’s European affairs minister Clement Beaune (pictured in Brussels on Tuesday) on Friday, is the latest over a long-running dispute on fishing licenses for French boats in British waters
His comments came after President Emmanuel Macron met fishing representatives and local officials, and follows a long running dispute between France and Britain.
The threat of proceedings also comes despite France claiming to have obtained 93 percent of the post-Brexit fishing licences it claims from Britain.
It hopes the European Commission will put further pressure on London.
French fishermen say Britain and the Channel Island of Jersey, a British crown dependency, are holding back on licenses for French boats that had been allowed to ply their waters for years before Britain left the EU.
The dispute has sparked the possibility of an all-out trade war, with fishermen in northern France vowing this week to step up protests and block British boats from French ports along the Channel coast.
France’s Maritime Minister Annick Girardin on Tuesday said ‘we won’t give in’ over the fishing row. Mr Beaune said earlier this week in an interview that France would still need ‘a few dozen’ fishing licences to settle the conflict with London.
Protests by French fisherman in November included the Channel Tunnel’s entrance being blocked. Pictured: French fishing boats block the entrance to the port of Saint-Malo on November 26, 2021
On Saturday, The UK and Jersey governments issued another 23 licences to French fishing boats to trawl British waters in an apparent attempt to ease tensions.
It came a day after a December 10 deadline for the UK to grant licences to dozens of French fishing boats under a Brexit deal signed last year, with Paris threatening European legal action if no breakthrough emerged.
The licences were agreed last Friday night after British officials met European Union counterparts and followed what the spokesman called an ‘evidence-based approach’ ensuring vessels qualify to work in UK waters.
The spokesperson added that the approach ‘provides stability and ensures the sustainability of our fisheries’, with the UK granting 18 licences and the Channel Island of Jersey five.
The EU hailed the agreement as ‘an important step in a long process’ towards implementing the 2020 Brexit agreement and said work continued to license seven more vessels by Monday.
France had previously said 104 of its boats still lacked licences to operate in British and Channel Island waters that should have been granted under the Brexit agreement.
Under the deal, EU fishermen can continue to work in British waters if they can prove they used to fish there.
Pictured: French Fishermen arrive at the port of Calais to blockade the entrance in a protest designed to increase pressure on the UK Government to grant licenses to European boats for licenses to fish within British waters on November 26, 2021 in Calais, France
A spokesperson said the decision had come after Environment Secretary George Eustice spoke with European Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius on Friday evening ‘following several weeks of intensive technical discussions on licensing’.
French fishermen last month disrupted cross-Channel ferry and freight traffic in protest at the post-Brexit arrangements and consequent loss of trade.
Half a dozen fishing boats blocked access to ferries at the northern port of Calais and the port of Ouistreham in Normandy to the west.
In May, protesting French trawlers massed in front of Jersey’s main port and even caused a brief standoff with Royal Navy vessels.
The UK is highly dependent on French ports, particularly for fresh food imports, and any extended blockade would have the potential to have a significant impact.
The EU and Britain are also locked in a separate trade row over checks on products entering the British province of Northern Ireland after the UK government unilaterally postponed the introduction of checks.
The dispute has exacerbated deteriorating bilateral relations between Britain and France, who have clashed this year over migrant crossings in the English Channel, post-Brexit trade arrangements and submarine sales to Australia.
To satisfy UK criteria, vessels need to prove that they have fished in UK waters for one day in each of the four years between 2012 and 2016, while Guernsey and Jersey ask for evidence of fishing for more than 10 days in one year of the above period.