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POLITICS

UK fishing boat captain to face trial in France

The captain of a British fishing boat detained by French authorities amid a deepening post-Brexit row over access to territorial waters will be tried in August 2022, prosecutors said on Friday.

Published: 29 October 2021 09:29 CEST
British fishermen stand on the trawler 'Cornelis-Gert Jan' in the harbour of Le Havre after it was detained by French authorities.
British fishermen stand on the trawler 'Cornelis-Gert Jan' in the harbour of Le Havre after it was detained by French authorities. Photo: Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP.

Maritime police ordered the boat sequestered at the Channel port of Le Havre on Wednesday, saying a spot check revealed it had gathered more than two tons of scallops in French waters without a proper licence.

“The captain of the Cornelis Gert Jan has been summoned to appear at a court hearing in Le Havre on August 11, 2022,” the city’s deputy prosecutor, Cyrille Fournier, said in a statement.

He faces charges of “non-authorised fishing in French waters by a boat from outside the European Union,” he added, which carry a maximum fine of €75,000 as well as “administrative penalties”.

The owner of the trawler said on Thursday that it was fishing legally in French waters, alleging that the fine appeared to be “politically motivated”.

“We’ve not had this issue” previously, Andrew Brown, a director at Scotland-based Macduff Shellfish, told AFP, adding they had not yet been able to contact French authorities.

Britain and France  are at loggerheads over licensing rules for EU boats wanting to operate in waters around Britain and the particularly Channel Islands.

EXPLAINED: Why are France and the UK fighting about fish?

Paris has warned that it will ban UK boats from unloading their catches at French ports starting November 2nd, and impose time-consuming customs and sanitary checks on all products brought to France from Britain.

French fishermen accuse officials in Britain as well as its protectorate of Jersey of using Brexit as an excuse to keep many from securing licences for waters they say they have plied for years.

London has denied the claims, and promised “an appropriate and calibrated response” to the French measures, since the British fishing industry depends on French ports as a gateway to Europe, its main export market.

Britain has summoned the French ambassador to explain “threats” made over the post-Brexit fishing rights.

Member comments

  1. The printed licence was issued in Dec 2020. Macduff fisheries is the biggest shellfish processor in Europe. They don’t fish illegally.

  2. I’m fed up with the problem this dispute is causing done some research.
    Why use Jersey to sort out this problem?
    Both governments are to blame but in different ways – This is one of many smoke screens by Johnson while he and his cabinet shape British policies out of parliamentary discussion, He is fast becoming the author of many policies without governmental approval, even the speaker of the house of commons has spoken sharply to the Chancellor for breaking budget rules (the last Chancellor to do this was sacked and put on the back benches) but He’s still there.
    The French on the other hand are looking towards presidential elections and are looking for favour and support amongst many other ploys.
    May be the answer is to get the fishermen on both sides to sort this out between them round an official disputes procedure without political intervention, they would probably do a much better job

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POLITICS

Macron takes Xi to French mountains to press messages on Ukraine and trade

French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday is to host Chinese leader Xi Jinping at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees mountains, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia's war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade.

Published: 7 May 2024 08:42 CEST
Macron takes Xi to French mountains to press messages on Ukraine and trade

The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday.

Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and to do all it could to end the war.

Xi for his part warned the West not to “smear” China over the conflict and also hit back at accusations that Chinese overcapacity was causing global trade imbalances.

The fresh mountain air at the village of Bagnere-de-Bigorre and the adjacent resort of La Mongie, as well as lunch accompanied by their wives Peng Liyuan and Brigitte Macron, will allow Xi and Macron to explore these issues in relative intimacy.

While born and brought up in Amiens in the north of France, the young “Manu” spent numerous winter and summer holidays with his late maternal grandparents in the area just below the Col du Tourmalet, over 2,000 metres above sea level and a legendary climb in the Tour de France.

Xi is expected to dine on local lamb, cheeses and wines in an environment the president hopes will help the pair get to the heart of the most pressing issues.

On Monday, Macron gifted the Chinese leader with bottles of cognac, as well as a bottle of Hennessy X.O. and a bottle of Remy Martin Louis XIII, according to a list of gifts seen by AFP.

In addition to the spirits, Macron also presented Xi with works by French novelist Victor Hugo, as well as the first Franco-Chinese dictionary, published in 1742, and a vase from a glassworks in Amboise.

‘Count on China’

Europe is concerned that while officially neutral over the Ukraine conflict, China is essentially backing Russia, which is using Chinese machine tools in arms production.

The other two countries chosen by Xi for his European tour after France — Serbia and Hungary — are seen as among the most sympathetic to Moscow in Europe.

“More effort is needed to curtail delivery of dual-use goods to Russia that find their way to the battlefield,” von der Leyen said after the trilateral talks, adding that “this does affect EU-China relations”.

She added that France and the EU also “count on China to use all its influence on Russia to end Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine”, saying both Europe and China “have a shared interest in peace and security”.

After a bilateral meeting with Xi, Macron welcomed China’s “commitments” not to supply arms to Russia, while also expressing concern over possible deliveries of dual-use technology.

He thanked Xi for backing his idea of a truce in all conflicts including Ukraine during the Paris Olympics this summer and pointedly added: “We do not have an approach seeking regime change in Moscow.”

Defending China’s stance, Xi warned against using the Ukraine crisis “to cast blame, smear a third country and incite a new Cold War.”

‘Flooding European market’

Both Macron and von der Leyen have indicated that trade was a priority in the talks, underscoring that Europe must defend its “strategic interests” in its economic relations with China.

“Europe will not waver from making tough decisions needed to protect its economy and its security,” she said.

Von der Leyen said there were “imbalances that remain significant” and “a matter of great concern”, singling out Chinese subsidies for electric cars and steel that were “flooding the European market”.

At the talks, Xi denied there was any problem of Chinese overcapacity in global trade and said China and Europe should address differences on trade through “dialogue and consultation, and accommodate each other’s legitimate concerns”, according to the foreign ministry.

France’s cognac industry, based in the southwest of the country, is meanwhile closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China, its second-biggest market, is retaliation by Beijing for the trade tensions.

Macron thanked Xi for not imposing “provisional” customs duties on French cognac amid the ongoing probe.

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