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POLITICS

Truce or not? France and UK at odds after crunch talks

France and Britain offered wildly differing accounts after their leaders met Sunday to resolve a row over post-Brexit fishing rights that threatens to turn into a full-blown trade war.

(From L) Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the Trevi fountain in central Rome
(From L) Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the Trevi fountain in central Rome on October 31st, 2021. France and Britain's takes on the outcome of fishing rights talks between their respective leaders are poles apart. Andreas SOLARO / AFP

President Emmanuel Macron’s office was optimistic after the French leader met Prime Minister Boris Johnson one-on-one, without aides, for about half an hour on the margins of the G20 summit in Rome.

The leaders agreed to work on “practical and operational measures” to resolve the dispute in the coming days, the office said.

They were united on the need for a “de-escalation” with concrete action “as soon as possible” it added, a day after Macron and Johnson gave each other friendly pats on the back at the G20.

But Downing Street denied any such agreement, and insisted it was up to Paris to back down on a threat to trigger trade reprisals against British fishing catches and other goods from Tuesday.

As the leaders met, the threat of “proportionate and reversible measures” against Britain was reaffirmed on Twitter Sunday by French Europe minister Clement Beaune.

 “If the French government want to come forward with proposals to de-escalate the threats they have made, we would absolutely welcome them,” Johnson’s spokesman told reporters in Rome.

“Our position has not changed,” he said.

France is incensed that Britain and the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey have not issued some French boats licences to fish in their waters since Brexit took full effect at the start of 2021.

The dispute has taken time out of both leaders’ packed schedules when they are both working hard on the climate change agenda heading into the UN’s COP26 meeting in Glasgow.

Johnson will host more than 120 leaders at a COP26 summit on Monday and Tuesday, and has repeatedly said that Britain, France and the EU as a whole need to stay focused on the existential threat.

‘Not helpful’ 
“France is a longstanding ally. It was an open meeting. They had a lot to discuss,” Johnson’s spokesman said.

But he stressed the UK would continue to process applications by French and other EU fishing vessels to ply its waters based solely on technical data.

“We stand ready to work with the French government and individual fishermen if they have the requisite data. There’s no further work to be done.”

Johnson’s own focus in the Macron meeting was on persuading the EU to amend a post-Brexit protocol governing trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the spokesman added.

And he said a strongly worded letter from French Prime Minister Jean Castex, urging EU chief Ursula von der Leyen to punish Britain over Brexit, was “not helpful”.

On Saturday in Rome, Johnson complained to von der Leyen that the French threats were “completely unjustified”.

London is warning it could activate a Brexit dispute tool for the first time, exposing all of the EU to potential UK trade measures, if France executes its threatened actions on Tuesday.

Paris had vowed that unless more licences are approved, it would ban UK boats from unloading their catches at French ports, and even impose checks on all products brought to France from Britain.

For his part, Macron warned Friday that Britain’s “credibility” was on the line, accusing London of ignoring the Brexit trade deal agreed with Brussels after years of tortuous negotiations.

“When you spend years negotiating a treaty and then a few months later you do the opposite of what was decided on the aspects that suit you the least, it is not a big sign of your credibility,” he told the Financial Times.

Both the UK and French governments have been intensifying their angry rhetoric in recent weeks, and France last week detained a British trawler that was allegedly fishing illegally in its waters.

The two sides have also been at loggerheads over a nuclear submarine alliance involving Australia, Britain and the United States, dubbed AUKUS, that left France in the cold.

READ ALSO: ANALYSIS: Why the new fishing row between France and UK could get nasty

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

Member comments

  1. It only takes one party to say there’s no agreement and there’s no agreement. Bit peculiar to pretend otherwise.

    1. Yet the other evening they were all gorging on a feast Louis XIV would be jealous of along, of course, with their hangers on whoops wives. Isn’t it about time people woke up to the fact all this bravado is being played out for the British guttersnipe press whilst the court jester and Macron are glad-handing and their wives are out shopping.

  2. how do i ensure that i am registered to continue receiving The Local please. I am being told regularly my membership has expired but not able to renew.

    Richard Bill
    363 Promenade de Coty, 46000 Cahors, France 33 565212007

    [email protected]

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POLITICS

New Caledonia airport to reopen Monday, curfew reduced: authorities

New Caledonia's main international airport will reopen from Monday after being shut last month during a spate of deadly unrest, the high commission in the French Pacific territory said, adding a curfew would also be reduced.

New Caledonia airport to reopen Monday, curfew reduced: authorities

The commission said Sunday that it had “decided to reopen the airport during the day” and to “push back to 8:00 pm (from 6:00 pm) the start of the curfew as of Monday”.

The measures had been introduced after violence broke out on May 13 over a controversial voting reform that would have allowed long-term residents to participate in local polls.

The archipelago’s Indigenous Kanaks feared the move would dilute their vote, putting hopes for eventually winning independence definitively out of reach.

READ ALSO: Explained: What’s behind the violence on French island of New Caledonia?

Barricades, skirmishes with the police and looting left nine dead and hundreds injured, and inflicted hundreds of millions of euros in damage.

The full resumption of flights at Tontouta airport was made possible by the reopening of an expressway linking it to the capital Noumea that had been blocked by demonstrators, the commission said.

Previously the airport was only handling a small number of flights with special exemptions.

Meanwhile, the curfew, which runs until 6:00 am, was reduced “in light of the improvement in the situation and in order to facilitate the gradual return to normal life”, the commission added.

French President Emmanuel Macron had announced on Wednesday that the voting reform that touched off the unrest would be “suspended” in light of snap parliamentary polls.

Instead he aimed to “give full voice to local dialogue and the restoration of order”, he told reporters.

Although approved by both France’s National Assembly and Senate, the reform had been waiting on a constitutional congress of both houses to become part of the basic law.

Caledonian pro-independence movements had already considered reform dead given Macron’s call for snap elections.

“This should be a time for rebuilding peace and social ties,” the Kanak Liberation Party (Palika) said Wednesday before the announcement.

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