France seizes British fishing boat in rights dispute
PARIS — France escalated a fishing rights dispute with Britain on Thursday, announcing that French authorities have seized a British boat that lacked a license to operate in French waters and have issued a warning to another British vessel.
France’s minister of the sea, Annick Girardin, announced the seizure one day after the French government threatened a number of sanctions against Britain in the lingering dispute that has stirred emotions on both sides of the English Channel for months. “Now we must speak the language of force because I fear that unfortunately this British government understands only that,” Clément Beaune, France’s junior minister responsible for European affairs, told right-wing news channel CNews.
Starting Tuesday, France could step up border checks on British goods entering France and ban British fishing boats from unloading their seafood at certain French ports, which could aggravate Britain’s supply chain crisis. French officials have also reiterated a prior threat of using electricity supplies to Britain as leverage, even though it was unclear how such measures would be implemented or when they would take effect.
The seizure of the British trawler Cornelis Gert Jan on Wednesday may have been meant as a warning shot. France’s Ministry of the Sea said in a statement that such checks were normal at this time of year, but it stressed that they had also occurred amid “tightening controls in the English Channel, in the context of the discussions over licenses.” The ministry added that the captain could face charges and the catch seized.
In a statement, the British government called the French threats “disappointing and disproportionate, and not what we would expect from a close ally and partner.”
Macduff Shellfish, the company that owns the seized boat, said the vessel is being used as a “pawn in the ongoing dispute.”
“Macduff’s fishing activity is entirely legal,” Andrew Brown, a director at the company, told Britain’s Sky News.
Fishing rights have been a growing point of vexation between Britain and the European Union since Britons voted to leave the bloc in 2016. In May, France and Britain deployed gunboats after French fishermen threatened to “blockade” a harbor at the little island of Jersey, where much of the tension has played out in recent months. British tabloids at the time declared that they were ready for war.
On Thursday, France’s sea minister clarified that she preferred to describe the dispute over shellfish as a “fight” and not as “a war.”
“It has been 9 months since French fishermen can no longer work,” Girardin wrote Thursday on Twitter, condemning what she called a “breach of signature” by the British.
The British government has said it approved 98% of European Union license requests, but the French minister on Thursday disputed those figures, suggesting that the problem was more widespread and disproportionately impacts French fishermen.
Although Jersey is about 14 miles off the French coast, the island is a British crown dependency. Following Brexit, Jersey has been requiring that French boat operators prove they have fished in the island’s waters in previous years — but those requirements are hard to fulfill, some French captains say, especially for smaller boats without the required proof of their past routes.
France accuses Britain of using that rule to deliberately withhold licenses from French fishing boats, which it argues violates the agreements governing postBrexit relations.
Britain “is negotiating the terms of the Brexit deal, line by line, to be penalized as little as possible,” Dimitri Rogoff, head of a regional fisheries committee in France, told the country’s public broadcaster.
“This is no way of working.”