France had given Friday as deadline on fishing licenses. The government of Boris Johnson did not answer.
by and
After months of tension, rhetoric climbing and threat of blockade, the fishing record between France and the United Kingdom on the point of overflowing? Friday, December 10, the deadline, self-imposed by France, has passed.
The government had asked the British to solve the problem of the hundred pending fishing licenses. The latter did not execute. They refuse to recognize this date of Friday, which has, indeed, no legal value. “We are not going to give licenses because we are trying to intimidate us, it is a question of principle,” retorts a British official. It willing to Paris to have threatened to cut the electricity from the island of Jersey, an estimated completely disproportionate gesture – and whose French government does not speak anymore.
High symbolic value
And now? Paris will he go in the way of an official litigation? The government had to leave the time for reflection during the weekend to find out what answer adopt. Several scenarios were envisaged, from the darker to the most optimistic. If the United Kingdom had to camp on its lasting position, France could ask the European Commission “to announce that one litigation is committed”, to regain the terms of the Secretary of State for European affairs, Clément Beaune. On the other hand, a “strong gesture” – of the order of about sixty licenses granted to the French fishermen, as well as a relaxation of the criteria imposed by the British – would be likely to deflate the crisis, consider it to Paris.
The French position must be stopped between Clément Beaune and the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, who is, to believe a good connoisseur of the file, “on a line of firmness” with the United Kingdom. But Emmanuel Macron also look closely with this subject at high symbolic value, four months from the presidential election. “I’m terribly wanting to have a [British] government that wants to simply work in good faith with us,” said the head of state Thursday. “We will not let go of our fishermen,” he said, on the 19th of November, promising to receive them before Christmas.
For the tenant of the Elysee, ardent promoter of European integration, the credibility of the Community institutions, challenged by the departure of the United Kingdom of the European Union. “The Brexit’s face, it will be that of the fisherman”, is customary to repeat Clement Beaune.
ambivalences
On the merger, the room for maneuver of France may, however, be limited. The government can not engage alone in legal litigation. Officially, fishing records are filed by the European Commission, and it is therefore to engage in possible retaliation, not in Paris.
Or, Brussels has no desire to get climbed on this subject. The Commission spent the Friday day attempting to defuse the bomb. His spokesman refused to talk about Friday as a deadline.
From Brussels, the file is above all symbolic. “95% of the licenses requested have obtained a positive answer,” note the Commission spokesman. In addition, the iron arm between London and Paris, which initially focused on nearly 200 boats, is only 104, according to the Ministry of the Sea. Guernsey recently attributed forty-three licenses, and Jersey gave Nine.
The disagreement comes from the ambivalences left in the agreement of Brexit. The boats capable of proving that they went to the British waters between 2012 and 2016 can benefit from a license. But the evidence that needed have not been clearly defined. For the smaller ships, less than twelve meters, which do not have GPS data, they are sometimes difficult to provide. The problem also concerns fishermen who have changed boat, which are not automatically recognized.
These discussions, which could have been technical, became a political symbol. At the risk of crossing a course more this weekend?