UK threatens more checks on EU fishing boats as row grows

(File photo) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson

Britain yesterday warned it may implement more checks on European Union fishing boats if France carries out its threat to take retaliatory measures in a deepening row over post-Brexit access rights. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will hold brief face-to-face talks with French President Emmanuel Macron at the G20 summit in Rome this weekend, after Britain summoned the French ambassador to explain Paris’s warning it could impose time-consuming checks on all products and a ban on UK vessels landing seafood at French ports. France is incensed that Britain and the self-governing islands of Jersey and Guernsey, which depend on London for defence and foreign affairs, have not issued all French boats with licences to fish in their waters post-Brexit. British minister David Frost yesterday raised London’s concerns with EU Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic during talks over the implementation in Northern Ireland of the Brexit deal agreed last year. Frost “set out to the vice president our concerns about the unjustified measures announced by France earlier this week to disrupt UK fisheries and wider trade, to threaten energy supplies,” the UK government said. If the French actions were implemented as planned on November 2, Britain said the EU would be in breach of their wide-ranging Brexit deal struck last year. “The government is accordingly considering the possibility, in those circumstances, of launching dispute settlement proceedings... and other practical responses,” it added. French prosecutors yesterday ordered a trial for the captain of a British trawler detained on charges of operating without a licence, in a further escalation of the row. French authorities seized the vessel at the northern port of Le Havre on Wednesday, accusing it of scooping up more than two tonnes of scallops in France’s waters without a proper permit. The city’s deputy prosecutor Cyrille Fournier said the captain would face a hearing next August on a charge of “non-authorised fishing in French waters”, which carries a maximum fine of 75,000 euros ($87,000) and potential “administrative penalties”. Andrew Brown of Scotland-based Macduff Shellfish, which owns the trawler, said yesterday that talks were continuing to get the boat and its crew out of Le Havre. He said he believed it had the proper licence and suggested there may have been an “administrative misunderstanding”. France has warned that unless licences are approved it will ban UK boats from unloading their catches at French ports from next week and impose checks on all products brought to France from Britain.