Post-Brexit conflict over fishing rights between EU and UK comes to a head | DW News

The row over Post-Brexit fishing rights between France and Britain is coming to a head as The UK govnernment said it's not working towards a deadline set by the EU Commission and ending taday to resolve the issue. French fishermen are caught between a rock and a hard place.

The French government alleges the United Kingdom is not honouring a post-Brexit deal on EU access to British fishing grounds by placing unreasonable demands on licensing requirements. If the dispute can't be solved today, the French Minister of Economy said France will retaliate by stepping up checks on trucks coming from Britain and barring British trawlers from docking in French ports - where they sell most of their catch.

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[thecrippledpancake]

If they actually started a war about fishing rights I wouldn’t be surprised at all.

[bcatbb]

what is surprising about this outcome. The UK doesn't want to offer anything in return and want all the benefits, nothing new

[adrianlatham]

100 licences that are lacking, eh? More like 100 French fishermen who were historically fishing illegally and had turned off their GPS tracking devices for years so they didn’t get caught.

[charlieadams]

As an Englishman that voted to remain this is highly depressing. We have far more in common with France than what divides us. This is all completely pointless.

[alexandermuller]

I'll definitely support France in that case 🇲🇫

[KEYUNTISER]

Why do the French think it is their right to fish in British waters? They shouldn't be permitted to fish in our waters at all.

[DarkKing]

A classic France versus England once more

[davidsimon]

Yeah 100% behind France. Show them what they get for leaving

[joedavidson]

As a commercial fisherman from Maine this clearly sucks for these guys. If they can’t fish they can’t make any money. It’s not like we have other jobs to fall back on. Especially for captains. They have their whole life invested in the boat and the gear. I hope they can end up working together for the fishermen and their families.

[sleepyjoe]

The Brits sees Europeans as inferior -- they still think they're the rulers of the world! LOL

[zapfan]

Good opportunity to stop over fishing...

[kevin-gqnq]

What you brings to others slowly coming back on to you...

[BarnOwl]

No special action is needed, just regular border control for entering goods from a country outside the EU would do the job. And that's is on the doorstep 2022 anyway.

[patriayvida]

It's good to see how well things are going for the UK. Ha ha ha...

[mcr]

As someone who has a fishing background. Ask yourself this. Why would you turn your GPS off? If you've been fishing there for decades and you can't find any GPS records that's a problem and shows they were probably not following the quotes.

[BobQuigley]

Mad hatter Boris' actions bring joy and comfort to Putin. Why waste intelligence resources to disrupt their foes when one member willingly does harm due to incompetence and corruption?

[gothenmosph]

I have a question, why do French fishermen need to go into UK waters so badly anyway? They have an absurd amount of coastline on their own country and I presume can fish in other EU members waters? Why are UK waters so important? Are EU ones over fished or something?

[JogBird]

UK acting like its still a colonial power

[S-Fan]

Even as I Briton, I express my support for France because 1. I never liked the idea of Brexit, 2. I’ve had it with the government being (what I call) a toryocracy (where the government set rules that they don’t have to follow). And 3. Britain agreed with the EU make a trade deal on fishing, and the deal they’ve proposed and the EU signed, doesn’t feel like it’s actually been implemented, and instead feels like the UK government broke its promise.

[naughtiusmaximus]

UK sold their fishing quotas to EU companies well before Brexit.

The French expect this to be honored as UK refuses to buy these quotas (and the livelihoods that depend on it) back.

Thing is the French have so much more leverage here. British supply chain is already buckling and highly dependent on EU imports.

UK is so dependent on lack of delays that they have delayed checks on EU goods yet again, regardless of the fact it opens the door to brazen smuggling, or the fact the lack of checks mean EU products have little to no additional admin costs. This makes them competitive, if not more so than UK products in their own home market.

A substantial amount of these EU imports flow through Calais. Any delays, such as with checks, much less a stoppage or sanction, can very quickly send that UK logistics situation into collapse.