The British government has deployed two warships around the Channel Island of Jersey, where more than 50 French fishing boats visited on Thursday to protest against the fishing conditions imposed after Brexit. The dispatch of these two Royal Navy ships, the HMS Severn and the HMS Tamar, to “monitor the situation” was headline-grabbing UK newspapers on Thursday, which highlighted escalating tensions over a topic that had already been explosive throughout the Brexit negotiations.
“Boris sends the gunboats to defend Jersey”, headlines the Daily Express, while the Daily Mail presents a similar one, photo of the imposing ship HMS Severn at stake. A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense stressed that it was “a strictly preventive measure, in agreement with the Jersey government”. On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had estimated that any potential blockade of the ports of Jersey by French fishermen “would be totally unjustified”, calling for a “de-escalation of tensions”.
Requirements without prior consultation
According to Paris, the United Kingdom on Friday published a list of 41 French vessels, out of 344 requests, authorized to fish in Jersey waters, but this list is accompanied by new requirements “which have not been concerted, discussed or notified before ‘as part of the agreement. On Tuesday, the French Minister of the Sea, Annick Girardin, said France was ready to resort to “retaliatory measures” if the British authorities continued to restrict the access of French fishermen to these waters. She mentioned possible repercussions on the “transmission of electricity by submarine cable” which supplies the island from France.
On the side of British fishermen, anger is also roaring. In the show Good morning Britain of the ITV television channel, Don Thompson, president of the Jersey Fishermen’s Association, criticized French fishermen on Thursday for wanting to “fish without constraint in (their) waters, while (their) boats are subjected to all kinds of conditions on how much (fish) they can catch, where they can ”.
He said it would be “extremely unfair” for the government to “capitulate to this” and that such tactics could be used “again in the future”. For her part, Stéphanie Yon-Courtin, French MEP and member of the EU Fisheries Committee, told the BBC that the British government must “understand that our fishermen need to continue working”. Regarding the threat of blackout, she said: “As a last resort, if we don’t have other ways to be understood, then we will have to consider this. ”
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