France offers fishing-spat reprieve

GLASGOW, Scotland — France’s president offered Britain an extra day of negotiations on Monday to try to reach a compromise on a post-Brexit fishing spat, hours ahead of a threatened French blockade of British ships and trucks.

France has threatened to bar British boats from some of its ports and tighten checks on boats and trucks carrying British goods if more French vessels aren’t licensed to fish in U.K. waters by today. Paris has also suggested it might restrict energy supplies to the Channel Islands, which are heavily dependent on French electricity.

The French government had said the port blockade would begin at midnight Monday if no compromise was found. But late in the day, French President Emmanuel Macron said talks would continue throughout the day today.

Speaking to reporters in Glasgow, Scotland, where he is attending an international climate conference, Macron said the discussions center on a proposal he made to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson after they met Sunday at the G-20 meeting in Rome.

“I asked the British to come back to us tomorrow with other propositions,” Macron said. “We will see where we are at the end of day tomorrow.”

The two countries said Britain’s Brexit minister, David Frost, and French Europe Minister Clement Beaune would hold talks Thursday in Paris.

Earlier Monday, the European Commission said it had called a meeting involving officials from Britain, France and the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, which are selfgoverning British Crown dependencies with control over their own territorial waters, “to allow for a swift solution on the outstanding issues” in the dispute over French fishing boats’ access to British waters.

Paris says authorities in the Channel Islands and Britain have denied permits to French boats that have fished in waters where they have long sailed, scooping up lobster, sea snails, sea bream and other fish from the English Channel. Britain says it has granted 98% of applications from EU vessels, a proportion that French authorities have questioned.

Britain says a few dozen boats have not been given permits because they have not shown the required paperwork to back up their applications.