France to seek EU action against Britain over fishing

PARIS: Paris will ask the European Commission to open post-Brexit litigation proceedings against Britain over a long-running dispute on fishing licenses for French boats in British waters, France’s European affairs minister said on Friday.

"In the coming days we will ask the European Commission to launch litigation, a legal procedure, for the licenses we are entitled to," Clement Beaune said after President Emmanuel Macron met fishing representatives and local officials.

Seizing the EU-UK Partnership Council, set up to settle trade disagreements after Britain’s exit from the EU, "tells the British that this is a European problem, that they are not respecting the agreement 100 percent, and that this political pressure will continue," Beaune said.

French fishermen say London and the Channel Island of Jersey, a British crown dependency, are holding back on licenses for French boats that had been allowed to ply their waters for years before Britain left the EU.

The dispute has sparked the possibility of an all-out trade war, with fishermen in northern France vowing this week to step up protests and block British boats from French ports along the Channel coast.

Britain agreed to issue an additional 23 licences to French fishermen on Saturday, but French Maritime Minister Annick Girardin said after Friday’s meeting that 73 licence requests were still outstanding.

She said talks with British and Jersey authorities would nonetheless continue "to try to wrest" the approvals "licence by licence." The European Union had set London a December 10 deadline to grant licences to dozens of French fishing boats under the post-Brexit trade accord signed last year, with Paris threatening European legal action if no breakthrough emerged.

British authorities say fishing vessels must prove they already had access to their waters before Brexit, but French fishermen have complained that the new requirement is unreasonably hard to meet.