Crisis deepens as UK skipper faces trial

THE skipper of the UK trawler detained by France was yesterday summonsed to appear before judges after Paris rejected claims it had a licence to fish in its waters.

The Scottish owners of the Cornelis Gert Jan are adamant that it was fishing legally when it was detained on Wednesday but their pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

Now the captain, who has not been publicly named, has been charged with ‘acts of unauthorized sea fishing in French maritime salt waters by a third party vessel to the European Union.’

He is due to appear at the Criminal Court of Le Havre on August 11 next year.

UK ministers were still scrabbling for answers yesterday amid claims the trawler’s alleged offence stemmed from a ‘minor administrative thing’.

Environment Secretary George Eustice said the Cornelis, which remained in port in Le Havre yesterday, was originally on a list of approved vessels but appeared to have been taken off.

Yet he said it was still entitled to fish in the waters. He added: ‘We are trying to get to the bottom of what happened’.

Deepening the mystery, European Commission spokesman Tim McPhie told journalists that the licence seemed to have been withdrawn by UK authorities back in March.

Andrew Brown, director of the boat’s owner MacDuff Shellfish, said: ‘We don’t know where the error of interpretation of the licence lies – that will take some time to fix. But I would believe that under normal circumstances a misunderstanding like this could be sorted out with a phone call.’

The boat, which left West Sussex on Tuesday morning, was meant to spend five days catching scallops before it was detained.

Mr Brown added that his priority now was getting his crew home. ‘UK fishermen are not particularly well thought of by the French industry so we’ve told the crew to stay onboard for their own safety and we want to get them out,’ he said.