November 9, 2021 - 3:57pm
Whatever happened to the Franco-British fish war?
Talks in Paris last week between Lord Frost, the British minister for Brexit, and Clément Beaune, the French minister for Europe ended, according to different sources, with: a) progress b) no progress at all.
The talks are continuing at a lower level this week. As things stand, the French government has suspended its threat to gum up cross-Channel trade.
Britain and Jersey are still refusing to hand over something like 180 post-Brexit licences to small French boats to fish in inshore waters — about 50% of the licences France says it is entitled to, not 2% as the UK government likes misleadingly to imply.
Is the war over? The Daily Mail thinks so. In an interesting dispatch from Brussels today, the Mail quotes French sources saying that President Emmanuel Macron has backed down. He has decided that continuing, or improved, defence cooperation with Britain is more important than a few licences for tiny boats to fish between 6 and 12 miles of the shores of England and the Channel Islands.
I doubt that. Macron is keen on defence cooperation between France and the UK, the only significant military powers in democratic Europe. But he is also angry about the missing licences.
Another, well-informed account, says that, au contraire, the fish war is about to open an explosive new front by merging with the far more serious EU-UK dispute over the Northern Ireland sea border.
A Twitter thread by Mujtaba Rahman (@Mij_Europe) of Eurasia Group today suggests that the EU — somewhat detached on the licence row until now — may be about to join the fisheries war. Arcane articles of the Brexit treaty allow Brussels to use fish to threaten immediate trade sanctions against Britain if Boris Johnson’s government goes ahead (as widely expected) and suspends some aspects of the Northern Ireland protocol in the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
Under the terms of the protocol, any direct retaliation by the EU against the UK on Northern Ireland would take a year to come into effect. Action on fish (implicitly linked to the Northern Ireland protocol) could be immediate.
Rahman tweeted: “…the EU’s strategy has clearly now shifted — from trying to make progress in negotiations to attempting to dissuade (Boris Johnson and David Frost) […] There will be lots of howls from UKG Brexity types that Fr/EU are linking fish to peace/stability in NI etc. But Govt has itself also attempted to link a deal over fish with EU flexibility over (the role of the European Court of Justice in Northern Ireland.”
What does that mean? It means that France’s unilateral threat to impose finicky checks on all trucks crossing the Channel — now suspended — could be taken over as a threatened EU retaliation. The issue would nominally remain fish. The actual issue would be Northern Ireland.
That would be a huge escalation of both disputes — in an attempt to force Britain to back down on both. The “fish war” is not over yet.
John Lichfield was Paris correspondent of The Independent for 20 years. Half-English and half-Belgian, he was born in Stoke-on-Trent and lives in Normandy.
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SubscribeWell I for one am so incredibly shocked that Northern Ireland would be used as a political football.
Who would ever think that anyone could toy with the lives of a couple of million people over some neocom market driven free trade club and associated gravy train.
Seems as though everyone everywhere is morally bankrupt these days.
I find thinking of the EU as a new Hanseatic League helpful.
From Wikipedia: “The League originated from various loose associations of German traders and towns formed to advance mutual commercial interests, such as protection against piracy and banditry. These arrangements gradually coalesced into the Hanseatic League, whose traders enjoyed duty-free treatment, protection, and diplomatic privileges in affiliated communities and their trade routes.”
Interestingly, although not members, we cooperated with it. My impression was that our relations with it were benign.
Sooner or later people will realise that the EU does not care one jot about about the UK….unless it is subservient to their myriad of rules and regulations. Maybe we should withdraw from NATO too and leave them to get on with their Eastern neighbours.
NATO is not the EU. Furthermore, it is for our benefit as much as others. And are you suggesting we leave NATO while the USA and Canada remain in? On the other hand, we should be very firm about rejecting an EU defence force, including dissuading any NATO member from diverting resources to it, and sacking any civil servant who is found to be promoting it on the grounds that it is harmful to the country’s defence policy.
‘Brexity types’ are fine people.
Very fine.
Shocking. If true we should suspend all cooperation with the EU.
Let us remember the 1970s Cod Wars between Iceland and UK was a false flag war directed by the CIA, so I wonder who, and why, this welk war is really about.
I forget the specifics but If I remember it there was an national zone of 3 miles of the sea back in the old days, or the length of a cannon shot – and 12 miles in modern times – but this is a ridiculous tiny amount, and so the issue need resolution, and thus ‘The Cod Wars’
The British were plundering the Icelandic cod stocks, having abused their own. Iceland fought back by towing cutting blades over the British Trawlers, and finally to some ramming…. and lots of talks and threatening, and then international voices of reason, and so the negotiating tables, and finally the outcome it was really all about – the 200 mile exclusive zone made international law.
Naturally in the modern world of offshore oil rigs, and fishery management and everything else the 200 mi zone was needed… and so the ‘great’ game played in the North Atlantic, and so international treaties, and all settled.
And then France has to always get into things internationally – so there was the Saint Pierre and Miquelon thing, and now this.
I wonder what the real game is – maybe just French being French – or maybe something being managed in the back rooms of the Langley facilities with MI5…..
Or perhaps the much more sensible and clear analysis suggested by John Lichfield… The CIA? which has performed so notably well in recent years over Afghanistan etc? It is odd how for conspiracy-theorist types the US agencies are all-powerful while at the same time they consider the host nation a basket case!
Perhaps China is only pretending to be an totalitarian expansionist state presuming its model is far superior to that of the West. In reality its ‘real game’ is to spread democracy and freedom across the world…
The ‘real game’ is usually the obvious one before us. There is quite an amusing naivety on the part of the conspiracist Right, rather similar to that of the Left in that respect, and a complete lack of understanding of human individual and societal motivation. This is why they end up with loopy-da-loop theories of global conspiracies between the Chinese Communist Party, Bill Gates, George Soros, the ‘World Economic Forum’ talking shop, Joe Biden and even Boris Johnson.
It is perfectly possible for nations to quarrel and fight over issues that seem remarkably trivial both in retrospect, and to a few, at the time, of which completely intangible matters such as ‘honour’ loom large. There is also the key role of contingency. Many other potential other flash points did not ignite the Great War, but the assassination of Archduke Franz Josef finally did. There need not be any ‘grand plan’.
Why would it be a CIA plot? The fact was that our fishing vessels had fished there for many years, and the Icelandic action was against international law. However, in retrospect, we can see that Iceland had a sound argument, quite rightly valuing their own vital interests above the interests of other nations. Eventually, international law followed their lead.
Unfortunately, the politicians of the UK showed less wisdom and care for their own interests, and particularly for their own fishermen, and it’s been downhill ever since. I’m not convinced we’ve yet stopped that.
It was discovered that naval ships designed for modern war weren’t robust enough for fisheries protection. Are we making use of that experience in preparation for the trouble which has looked inevitable since 2016, and certainly baked into the TCA as from 2026?
The clincher was that Iceland threatened to break the vital link in the North Atlantic NATO cover. Perhaps that’s another lesson.
Prudence is needed these days in bandying around the term ‘war’, for anything ranging from a dispute to a more substantive disagreement between allies. There are plenty of areas in E Europe where the risk of war, or its reality, makes war usage more apt. The channel fishery case, however, is a sprat spat plus prat (insert name of choice). The EU may yet reignite NI to protect its perceived ‘near-abroad’; Ukraine (Russian near-abroad) already has a real war, while Serbia, Belarus and other areas pose growing risks (while EU27 abandons high NI-style principle for Russian favour or gas). The point being: it’s one thing to cover Normandy and win french plaudits for such assured pieces, but war reporting it ain’t.
First, this piece shows utter confusion on behalf of its author and those he refers to including some anonymous well informed sources. ( John Lichfield the would be Smiley)
Second, it demonstrates that journalists are not lawyers and certainly not international lawyers and that their interpretation of international agreements is more than flimsy not to say biased. ( the limps guiding the blinds)
Third, it reveals nothing that was not known for sometime now, so why bother writing unless it is for attention seeking not knowing what to do with oneself.
Fourth, once again Lichfield’s “Macronphilia” is rampant. I would suggest he reads the recently published book on Macron “ Le traitre et le néant” (The traitor and the void) written by two well known and trustworthy investigative journalists of le Monde ( not what we would call a right wing oriented paper ) hopefully an eye opener for the infatuated «Macronphiles »living in the same Parisian “Macroncosme” and an informative piece for anyone not living in France and wanting to know about Macron (it is available on Kindle). Interestingly the tittle of the book comes from the words the most used to qualify Macron and his policies and this by the 110 people or more who were interviewed and who came from all political walks including Macron’ s, provided he has one, a justifiable question when you read the book.
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