France threatens UK with power cuts and Christmas shortages in fishing row

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.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

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.”

The threat came after it emerged that French fishermen were also “threatening to disrupt Christmas for Britons by cutting off crucial supplies” if the terms of the Brexit agreement relating to fishing are not honoured by the UK, The Times said.

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.

The interventions came after ​​Paris became angered by a series of application rejections to fish in British waters. The government announced last month it had approved 12 of the 47 applications received from French small boats.

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.”