Paris plans to ban British fishing vessels to land their cargo in French ports if negotiations do not advance enough.
Le Monde with AFP
The conflict around the post Brexit fishing licenses continues to poison relations between Paris and London. Monday 1 st November, the British Foreign Affairs, Liz Truss called on the French government to withdraw its threats of sanctions to come into effect on Tuesday, unless significant advance negotiations. Paris plans to ban British fishing vessels to land their cargo in French ports. A strengthening of customs controls of trucks is also the order of the day.
“The French have completely unreasonable threats,” said Liz Truss on Sky News. If not addressed “in forty-eight hours,” the foreign minister said the British government would rely on the dispute settlement mechanism as part of the post-trade agreement Brexit to ask for “compensatory measures “.
Jersey taken in the dispute
Under the agreement Brexit, European fishermen can continue to work in certain British waters provided they can prove that they are already fished between 2017 and 2020. But nearly a hundred of them n have not been able to provide sufficient evidence of this history, says London. Seventy-five Boulogne fishermen were denied their license, and 55 others should lose their provisional license at the end of October if the administration of Jersey does not renew.
“We have been in discussion with the European Commission in weeks on the issue of licenses and we have responded positively to 98% of license applications [made by the Europeans]. We acted in good faith and we fully complied with the agreements TCA [post-Brexit trade treaty], “said David Frost, the Minister of Europe Boris Johnson, Twitter on Saturday .
Paris and London believe is within their rights; French President Emmanuel Macron, said Sunday that the “ball was in the camp of the British”.
Caught in the dispute between the two countries, Ian Gorst, Minister of External Relations of the Anglo-Norman island of Jersey, called Sky News to “stop all this nonsense and look after technical problems” for for issuing fishing licenses.
the northern Irish problem
Another area of post-Brexit tension persists regarding Northern Ireland. London requires the renegotiation of specific customs measures to the British province but negotiations, which resumed this week in Brussels, remain deadlocked.
in the daily the Telegraph , Vice President of the European Commission, Maros Sefcovic said he was” increasingly concerned that the UK government s engages on the path of confrontation “.
Aimed at both protecting the European market and to prevent the recovery of a physical border on the island of Ireland, which could undermine peace, Northern Ireland protocol maintains that Northern Ireland in the customs union and the European single market.
But it is denounced by London and unionists in Northern Ireland, attached to the maintenance of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. They accuse disrupt trade between the province and Britain, separated by the sea. The British Secretary of State for Brexit, David Frost, said that the European Union had shown “no regard for the enormous political sensitivity, economic and identity “in Northern Ireland.