Truss talks tough as fishing deadline nears

THE UK will not “roll over” in the face of “unreasonable” threats from France’s President Emmanuel Macron over the post-Brexit fishing row, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said.

Mr Macron has warned that, unless Britain made a “significant move” to ease the dispute over licences to fish in UK waters, Paris would introduce more stringent port and border checks from today.

Ms Truss said the UK would respond by triggering dispute resolution measures in the Brexit trade deal to seek “compensatory measures”, if Mr Macron’s administration carries out its threats.

The fishing row adds to the tensions around UK-European Union relations, with the dispute over the Brexit deal’s Northern Ireland Protocol also causing a diplomatic row with Brussels.

The dispute with France was triggered by decisions made by the authorities in the UK and Jersey over licences for small French boats to operate in British waters, with officials arguing permission can only be given to vessels which can demonstrate a history of fishing in those waters.

French officials have warned that they will bar UK fishing boats from some ports and tighten customs checks on lorries entering the country, unless more fishing licences are granted.

Mr Macron, who held talks with Boris Johnson at the G20 summit in Rome on Sunday and was welcomed to the Cop26 climate change conference by the Prime Minister in Glasgow yesterday, said the ball is in the UK’s court. “If the British don’t do any significant move, measures starting from November 2 will need to be implemented,” he warned on Sunday.

In response, Ms Truss told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Those threats are completely unwarranted. We allocated the fishing licences completely in line with what is in the trade agreement with the EU and the French need to withdraw those threats.

“Otherwise we will use the dispute resolution mechanism in the EU deal to take action. We are simply not going to roll over in the face of these threats.”

Ms Truss suggested that Mr Macron’s hard-line stance was motivated by domestic political concerns. She told Sky News: “You might say there’s a French election coming up.”

The Foreign Secretary said the French had made “unreasonable threats” and the UK would take legal action “if the French don’t back down”. She added: “This issue needs to be resolved in the next 48 hours.” A Downing Street spokesman declined to set out whether there are contingency plans if France carries out its threats, or at what time it understands the French deadline will fall today.

Meanwhile, discussions are due to continue in Brussels between UK and EU teams this week as they aim to find a solution to the disruption being caused by the Northern Ireland Protocol, designed as part of the Brexit deal to avoid a hard border in Ireland.

The UK’s Brexit minister, Lord Frost, and European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic are due to meet face-to-face on Friday to check-in on what progress has been made.

Lord Frost has condemned the EU for behaving “without regard to the huge political, economic and identity sensitivities” in Northern Ireland.