Brexit spat centers on fishing rules
Naval ships deployed as tensions between UK, France boil over
Naval ships deployed off the Channel Island of Jersey as tensions between U.K., France boil over.
LONDON — It wasn’t another Falklands War, let alone a modern-day battle of Trafalgar. Yet, when naval ships from Britain and France converged in the waters off the island of Jersey on Thursday, it was a vivid reminder of the loose ends left by Britain’s bitter departure from the European Union.
The maritime standoff came after 60 French fishing boats massed to blockade a port in Jersey in an ugly spat over post-Brexit fishing rights. By day’s end, tempers had cooled as both sides pledged to work out differences over new licensing requirements for the French fishermen who ply these coastal waters. The French protesters shot off flares and waved angry banners, then sailed away.
The eruption of tensions in the English Channel, five months after Britain ratified its split with the EU and on the eve of a British election, drew theatrical displays of muscle-flexing in London and Paris — suggesting it was a politically expedient six-hour clash, even if it augurs months or years of tensions ahead.
The drama began Wednesday evening when Prime Minister Boris Johnson deployed two Royal Navy vessels, the HMS Tamar and the HMS Severn. His office called it a “precautionary measure,” but it amounted to a vigorous show of support for Jersey,
a crown dependency of Britain and the largest of the Channel Islands.
A day later, France answered with its own deployment of two naval patrol ships near the island, which lies 14 miles off the French coast. French officials said they were sent to protect the “safety of human life at sea” in the crowded waters off Jersey’s capital, St. Helier.
British papers published video of a French trawler ramming the stern of a British pleasure craft; no one was hurt.
Earlier in the week, a French government official warned that France could
cut off the power supply to Jersey, most of which is delivered through undersea cables from France. That brought a derisive reaction from London, where officials muttered that even Germany hadn’t turned off the lights when it occupied Jersey during World War II.
For Britain, which just played host to foreign ministers from the Group of Seven nations and is debuting its post-Brexit role in the world, a clash with France over fish in the English Channel seemed like a relic of a bygone age. But it also laid bare the risks of life outside the EU.
“This is the kind of
old-fashioned dispute that the European Union was created to prevent,” said Simon Fraser, the former top civil servant in Britain’s Foreign Office. “When you leave the European Union, you risk reopening them.”
Gerard Araud, a longtime French diplomat who served as ambassador to the United States, said, “What is happening in Jersey is, on the one hand, totally silly. Threatening to cut off the electricity makes no sense.”
Still, Araud said the indignant French reaction had a deeper subtext: The country’s sense of anger and loss at Britain’s departure from the EU, where it had helped
balance France’s relationship with Germany.
At issue in Jersey are new licensing requirements the authorities imposed on French fishing boats, which have long worked the waters around the Channel Islands. Among other things, the vessels are required to carry equipment that allows their locations to be tracked.
Under the part of the Brexit agreement governing fishing, which went into effect May 1, following a four-month grace period, Jersey granted fishing licenses to 41 French boats larger than 39 feet. The problem, according to Marc Delahaye, director of the Normandy Regional Fisheries Committee, was that the additional requirements were imposed without warning or consultation. The European Commission said the British government had notified it of the changes last week and that it was in discussions with London.
As a crown dependency, Jersey is not part of the United Kingdom and has special status that gives it self-governing rights, including its own Legislative Assembly, as well as fiscal and legal systems. However, Jersey’s reliance on French electricity makes its economy vulnerable, Delahaye said, noting that it was in the interests of the British and French governments to calm the situation.
For Johnson, however, the timing of the clash arguably could not have been better. Voters went to the polls in Britain on Thursday in local and regional elections that are viewed as a referendum on his Conservative Party after Brexit and a year of the pandemic. News that he had deployed navy warships, bristling with machine guns, pushed aside a skein of reports about his ethical conduct while in office.
“Our New Trafalgar,” said a headline in the online edition of the Daily Mail, referring to the 1805 battle in which the Royal Navy vanquished the navies of France and Spain and established Britain’s maritime supremacy. One of the French patrol boats, the Athos, was much smaller than the British warships, it noted.
Later Thursday, the government declared the crisis “resolved for now” and said the two warships would prepare to return to port.