Why a UK-French spat over fishing rights may trigger a no-deal Brexit

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.

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

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.

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.

Economics aside, fishing has also long been “an emotional issue” in the UK’s relationship with the bloc, and Brexiteers “see it as a symbol of sovereignty that will now be regained”, says the BBC.

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.