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UK warns France it will not ‘roll over’ in dispute over fishing rights

The UK overseas secretary has warned that Britain wouldn’t “roll over” in a dispute with France over fishing rights, as Paris threatened to disrupt the movement of UK exports from Tuesday except a deal is reached.

Liz Truss mentioned France’s plan to escalate the row was “fully unwarranted” and mentioned Britain was prepared to make use of dispute decision mechanisms below its Brexit commerce cope with the EU to settle the problem.

“The French must withdraw these threats,” Truss informed the BBC on Monday, as relations between the 2 international locations hit one other low level. “We’re merely not going to roll over within the face of those threats.”

The dispute over post-Brexit fishing licences is a part of a wider set of grievances which have pitted UK prime minister Boris Johnson in opposition to French president Emmanuel Macron.

Macron can also be livid that Britain is attempting to renegotiate the Northern Eire protocol, a part of the UK’s withdrawal cope with the EU, whereas the problem of migrants crossing the English Channel is one other working sore.

Tensions over fishing rights have been simmering for months after the UK didn’t situation permits for some small French boats to fish in British waters below the Brexit settlement.

Paris had introduced it might improve customs and sanitary controls on freight, make stricter checks of vans coming in and leaving France, and ban trawlers from touchdown their catch in French ports if the dispute was not resolved by Tuesday.

“The ball is in Britain’s courtroom,” Macron mentioned at a press convention on the G20 summit in Rome on Sunday, saying that retaliatory measures would apply if London didn’t settle for the “de-escalation” proposed by Paris.

Macron, who met Johnson in Rome on the weekend, is suspected in London of fuelling the row for home political benefit forward of presidential elections subsequent yr.

Truss, requested whether or not Brexit had created the circumstances for continuous diplomatic friction, responded by saying the UK had wonderful relations with international locations together with the US, Australia and India.

Requested in regards to the UK-EU dispute in regards to the Northern Eire protocol, she mentioned: “We don’t need confrontation — we wish to attain a constructive settlement that enables our commerce to movement freely.”

Talks between the 2 sides on bettering the operation of the protocol proceed this week, with the principal negotiators from each side ratcheting up the rhetoric.

“I’m more and more involved that the UK authorities will refuse to have interaction with this and embark on a path of confrontation,” Maros Sefcovic, European Fee vice-president in command of the negotiations for the bloc, wrote within the Each day Telegraph.

Some in Brussels worry that Johnson will activate the Article 16 “override” mechanism within the protocol as soon as the COP26 local weather summit is over in Glasgow, pushing each side additional in direction of a commerce battle.

Lord David Frost, writing a foreword to a Coverage Alternate paper on the protocol, claimed the Johnson administration had signed the cope with the EU from a place of “excessive weak point”.

“The insistence of the EU on treating these preparations as like every other a part of its customs and single market guidelines, with out regard to the massive political, financial and identification sensitivities concerned, has destroyed cross-community consent properly earlier than the four-year mark,” he wrote.

He added: “That’s the reason we should return to the protocol and ship a extra sturdy, and extra balanced, end result than we might in 2019.”

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