France has ramped up tensions in the ongoing dispute over post-Brexit fishing rights with a threat to cut energy and Christmas supplies to the UK and Jersey.
Minister for Europe Clement Beaune, who The Guardian described as a “close ally of the French President Emmanuel Macron”, said the Brexit deal had to be “implemented fully” to avoid France taking “European or national measures to exert pressure on the UK”.
“Enough already, we have an agreement negotiated by France, by Michel Barnier, and it should be applied 100%,” he added. “We defend our interests. We do it nicely, and diplomatically, but when that doesn’t work we take measures.”
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Asked what measures could be taken, Beaune “pointed to both UK exports to France and European energy exports to the UK”, Sky News added, warning: “The UK depends on our energy exports, they think they can live alone while also beating up on Europe and, given that it doesn’t work, they engage in aggressive one-upmanship.”
Olivier Lepretre, head of the northern France fisheries committee, said that “if negotiating fails”, French fishermen “will stop all French and European products reaching the UK, and we will stop all British products reaching Europe”.
“Unless Boris backs down, the Brits will not have so many nice things to eat this Christmas. I hope it doesn’t come to that,” he added.
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The threat to restrict energy supplies is not the first by the French government, which earlier this year “made similar threats of ‘retaliatory measures’ as part of a fishing dispute with Jersey”, Sky News said. That dispute culminated in a threat to completely cut off the Crown Dependency, “which receives 95% of its electricity from France through three undersea cables”.
David Frost, the former Brexit negotiator who is now serving as Minister of State at the Cabinet Office, yesterday accused France of making “unreasonable” threats to shut out the UK’s access to the EU energy market.
Responding to the French government’s “ultimatum”, Frost “accused Paris of behaving poorly and claimed it was another example of the EU resorting to needless threats” during an appearance at the Conservative Party conference, The Telegraph said.
“For all the frustrations of the last 18 months, I can't think that we as a country have resorted to those sorts of threats,” he told a fringe event at the gathering in Manchester.
Adding that the UK has not made “those sort of direct threats to our neighbours”, he continued that “the vaccine export ban earlier this year is another example of where the EU resorts to these sorts of threats quite quickly”.
“That’s not how we should behave. We don’t, and I don’t see why our neighbours feel they have to.”
