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Disagreements over territory threaten to sink last-minute negotiations
One-Minute Read
Chas Newkey-Burden
Tuesday, October 13, 2020 - 9:48am
France will show “no weakness” during crunch negotiations over Brexit fishing rights, President Emmanuel Macron’s Europe minister has warned.
As Britain and the EU prepare to return to the negotiating table in a bid to hammer out a free trade deal, Clement Beaune insisted that France “will not accept a bad deal and a bad deal in fisheries in particular. We will have no weakness on this issue of fisheries, that is clear.”
The warning follows a phone call on Saturday between Boris Johnson and Macron during which the UK leader threatened to quit the talks if the “shape” of a trade deal is not in sight by Thursday’s EU summit in Brussels, The Telegraph reports.
But a defiant Beaune yesterday told “the UK and his EU allies that Paris would not allow French fishermen to be sacrificed just to get the free trade agreement over the line”, the newspaper adds.
See related
Brexit talks will decide UK fishing rights, EU says Is Boris Johnson on the verge of securing a UK-EU trade deal? Why the European Union is wargaming for a no-deal Brexit Some EU countries, including Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands, are expected to support France on the issue, but others, such as Germany, believe a zero tariff trade deal is more important than the demands of the fishing sector.
The dispute centres on the question of who will have the right to catch what and in which waters when the Brexit transition period ends on 31 December. Boats from member states land about eight times more fish in UK waters than British fishermen do in EU waters, but the UK is dependent on the European export market.
Brexiteers view fishing as “a symbol of sovereignty that will now be regained”, the BBC explains. And that means an industry worth a “minuscule share of GDP - an economic sprat, a mere tiddler - could still sink the talks” this week, says Politico.
“As things stand, a poisonous mixture of political over-bidding and technical complexity threatens to capsize the entire post-Brexit negotiation, ” the news site adds.
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Brexit Fishing Emmanuel Macron EU Boris Johnson
https://www.theweek.co.uk/108354/why-no-deal-brexit-may-come-down-to-fishing-rights