‘Five days that took Brexit to the brink’ - Part II
Five fishing days until Emperor Emmanuel’s ‘guerre franco-brittanique’?

France issued bizarre ultimatum to UK via the press, breaking international law in fish war

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2025 and the UK Fisheries Campaign 2025

Facts4EU.Org filleted the French government’s claims, as Macron cast around for votes at home

With less than two weeks before the start of Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘Great EU Reset Summit’, today the UK Fisheries Campaign and GB News, in association with Facts4EU and CIBUK, continues its short series revealing just how close the UK came to a dramatic and total breakdown of normal and peaceful co-existence with its nearest neighbour, France, over a highly-charged five-day period in late 2021.

As bizarre as it may seem, the extreme set of events put in motion by the French against the British people was over a handful of fishing licences.

In the autumn of 2021 the British government – and many EU27 governments – had been looking on for weeks as French ministers increasingly made hostile threats against the United Kingdom over an issue so small that if it were a fish it would have been thrown back in the water.

In the evening of Tuesday 27 October 2021, in what must go down as a low point in the grand tradition of ‘la diplomatie française’, the French government issued what amounted to an ultimatum to the British government. And they did so by press release (in French), rather than informing the United Kingdom government. This communiqué was issued on Twitter and was not available on any French government website at the time.

What had Macron’s ‘attack puppy’, Clément Beaune, threatened?

The two page ‘press communiqué’ tabled the following specific threats of French hostile action, starting on 02 November 2021.

The UK Fisheries Campaign Summary

The French ultimatum, 27 Oct 2021

Blocking all British fishing vessels from landing fish in French ports
Imposing strict controls at the border
Systematic surveillance and checking of all British boats in French waters
Imposing strict border controls on all lorries coming from or departing to the UK

Secondary actions listed

Cutting off power supplies to the UK as part of a second set of measures
The stopping of cooperation on all other subjects concerning relations between the UK and the EU
The French also demanded another meeting with all EU countries about its fishing dispute, ‘without delay’

The most extraordinary and unacceptable French action ever threatened to a supposed ally?

It is worth pausing for a moment to consider this overtly hostile and menacing French government action. Firstly, there was no remote justification for it, as we shall prove in a later instalment in this series. Secondly, it represented the most serious potential attack on fishermen, on the UK's lorry transport to the continent which would have been brought to a halt, on businesses of all kinds exporting goods, and even on all non-export businesses and all members of the public if the French power cables had been turned off.

Finally consider the delivery of these threats. This was not done by any of the formal means of communication between governments. Instead, the first the British government knew of the apocalyptic set of French threats was after they had been posted as a Tweet.

This behaviour by a supposedly friendly government is so extreme in every way that it is almost beyond words to describe it. It falls so far beneath what should be expected of a civilised country it could be said to represent a pivotal moment, permanently changing any ordinary person's opinion regarding the very nature of that country.

Lord Frost immediately sent a robust response

Someone in Lord Frost’s office clearly monitored the Twitter accounts of France’s Europe Minister, Clément Beaune, and its Minister of the Sea, Annick Girardin. At 10pm that night Lord Frost responded.

“It is very disappointing that France has felt it necessary to make threats late this evening against the UK fishing industry and seemingly traders more broadly. We set out our position earlier this evening.”

“As we have had no formal communication from the French Government on this matter we will be seeking urgent clarification of their plans. We will consider what further action is necessary in that light.”
Lord Frost, 27 Oct 2021

Emmanuel Macron seemed set to break international law to gain votes

The French government appeared to be set on a course that would steer them the next week to act unilaterally against the United Kingdom, breaking all manner of terms of the UK-EU treaty, and doing so without the approval of the EU Council. The French applied significant pressure in the previous two weeks to gain an EU-wide agreement to act against the UK, but singularly failed to do so.

Unworthy of France?

By this point the petulance and outright hostility being shown by President Macron’s French government towards Brexit Britain seemed to have known no bounds.

Unable to persuade the EU that the UK had acted unreasonably, (and the EU normally needs little encouragement for this view), the French were now acting unilaterally. Perhaps they were hoping to ‘bounce’ the EU into supporting them.

By saying they would block British boats from French ports, rigorously inspecting all British boats in French waters, and clogging up the normal supply of British goods into France, they would have been breaking many of the terms of the EU Treaty, the EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement, and the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, to say nothing of several aspects of international law.

The secondary actions they were planning, including the cutting of power supplies which were contained in international supply contracts, simply beggar belief.

President Macron seemed to want to create a foreign war to deflect attention from problems at home

History is full of examples of leaders in trouble at home, who see a foreign conflict as a way of distracting voters’ minds from their poor performance. In Emmanuel Macron’s case, he faced an election in April the next year and his popularity ratings were not good.

What better target than Perfidious Albion, the old enemy? Attacking ‘Les Rosbifs’ is always going to play well in many parts of the French public, just as many parts of the British public don’t mind seeing the French in trouble. Perhaps a difference is that the British often do this in a humorous spirit, rather than a hostile one.

In his young protégé Clément Beaune President Macron had the perfect ‘attack puppy’ – someone oblivious to any damage he might do to France’s reputation in the EU and around the world and seemingly 100% loyal to his master in the Elysée Palace.

The only question was: at what cost to France’s reputation?

Before we continue, a word about the UK Fisheries Campaign

Facts4EU has been providing research material to our friends at the UK Fisheries Campaign (UKFish.Org) who are doing excellent work in highlighting the need to improve the lot of our fishermen and the coastal communities they operate from. They are working closely with elements of the media and with influential politicians to ensure that our fishing industry isn't once again sold down the river.

Please do take a look at their website and support them if you can.

France vs. the UK - Macron’s phony ‘Cod-Piece War’

If France had been in the right, the EU would have been backing France. It wasn’t

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2021

There could have been no question in any reasonable person’s mind, once given sight of the evidence, that France was pursuing a vindictive and hostile policy against the United Kingdom for President Macron’s own domestic political ends.

Below we publish important parts of this evidence. The sheer extent of the UK’s appeasement of the apparently unappeasable French will shock many readers.

The unbelievably-low level of qualification the UK was asking for, to grant a licence to French boats

The basic principle which was agreed between the UK and the EU in the Withdrawal and Trade negotiations was that EU fishing boats would be issued with UK fishing licences if they had fished at some point in UK waters in four out of the five years leading up to 2016, when the British public voted to leave the EU.

The French were mostly arguing about a tiny number of small boats – by this stage only 15 – which wanted licences to fish up to six nautical miles from the UK coast. Below Facts4EU.Org shows just how lenient the UK authorities had become, bending over backwards to give licences to French boats on what was now the flimsiest of evidence that they once fished there.

Positional and catch data

There were two basic requirements – the ability to prove a vessel had once fished in UK waters, and the ability to provide sales evidence of just one day’s catch in each of four out of the five years. Below is the steady lessening in the levels of proof that was then required of the French.

For vessels equipped with vessel monitoring systems (VMS) the data had to be provided showing fishing activity within the relevant zone in all four years.
<12 metres long, with no VMS but with an automatic identification system (AIS), had to provide AIS data.
<12 metres long, with no VMS or AIS, had to provide chartplotter data demonstrating the date/position/speed.
Official sightings data (eg French Customs) of fishing activity would also be considered.
The above proofs only needed to cover two out of the required four years.
French boats unable to provide any of the basic information above were allowed to provide alternative evidence of fishing activity within the relevant area for up to two out of the four years, including data from other EU boats.
And to cap it all, if some of the above evidence conflicted, the evidence which granted a licence would be used, even if it was contradicted by the other evidence.

The continual extension of deadlines for the French to provide something – anything – to back their claims

The rules all changed 10 months earlier on 01 January 2021, when the UK (except Northern Ireland) formally left the EU.

The deadline to provide information to obtain licences was extended from three months to six months and then became indefinite. Both the Marine Management Organisation which is the UKSIA (Single Issuing Authority), and the UK Government, said that they would continue to consider all new evidence provided by the French authorities.

It is worth observing that of the figure of 47 outstanding licences which was repeatedly quoted in the press at the time, 17 had been withdrawn by the French. At least 15 of the remaining 30 contentious licences had already been issued and we understood at the time that several more were in the process of being (perhaps reluctantly) accepted.

Observations

La plume de ma tante

Short of the UK authorities accepting a phone call from a maiden aunt in Boulogne saying she was sure that her favourite nephew Jean-Luc had once mentioned catching a fish not far from Angleterre and that his boat must therefore have a licence, it is hard to see how the UK authorities could have been more lenient with the French.

Back in 2021 it started to look as if every French Tom, Dick and Haricot Vert who claimed he had a right to British fish would be granted a licence. And let’s be clear, these licences and the boats they were attached to could then be sold to any EU company that wanted to fish in UK waters.

Why wasn’t the EU backing the French?

Any cursory look in late 2021 at the behaviours and actions of the EU in the five-and-a-half years since the British people voted to leave the European Union demonstrated that if the EU got a chance to attack Brexit Britain, it did. Facts4EU.Org documented and published all of this on an almost daily basis for years.

Fishing rights are enshrined in the Withdrawal Agreement and the Trade and Co-operation Agreement between the EU and the UK, and in some side agreements since. If the UK had been breaking the rules it was the EU which would have been acting, not one member country – in this case Macron’s France.

At the next EU Summit the French government tried desperately hard to persuade the other EU member countries to adopt an EU stance condemning the UK over fishing rights and taking action against the UK. The EU Council refused. It seems that even the EU could not find any evidence that the British government were acting in any way improperly.

Macron plumbed the depths in his ‘Cod-Piece War’

Here we had an increasingly belligerent French government threatening all manner of reprisals against the United Kingdom for alleged offences of which the UK was innocent. Perhaps the only fault was in kowtowing and appeasing the French to an extent which Theresa May would have been proud of.

France remains one of the great European countries. It was deeply disappointing at the time to see it descending to these depths in what could only be seen as an attempt by President Macron to deflect attention away from his problems at home.

Many readers will remember the so-called ‘Cod Wars’ with Iceland some decades ago. In the case of President Macron and his equally diminutive (then) Minister of European Affairs Clément Beaune, the situation at the end of October 2021 might better have been described as ‘the Cod-Piece War’.

[ Sources: UK Dept for the Environment and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) | UK Marine Management Organisation | EU Council ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Wed 07 May 2025

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Reader Comments 7

1. Sparky , Wednesday, May 07, 2025, 05:57:

Michael Gove (now Lord Gove as a reward ). 'we'd hold all the cards'
.
Meanwhile Stormont will allow people in Northern Ireland with ROI citizenship to vote in elections in ROI.

2. Ashley Great Britain , Wednesday, May 07, 2025, 06:23:

That is the general french feeling and outlook towards the UK, it has been for a very long time.
Whether they would do it or not, those threats and claims are crazy.
There is of course many things the UK can do to France, but we don't have the political will and we're lead by weak appeasers.
The whole things a stuff up, why were we delivering 98% of all French claims anyway. Many would have acquired fishing rights they didn't have before.
The TCA and Windsor framework are bad enough, now we have eu loving give away starmer as the face of Britain, he's going to take a nice little trip to see his EU chums, so they can work out how best to further damage and limit our freedoms and return us to the EU fold.
France will have all their plans ready and starmer will bow down accordingly. If only we had strong government that works in the best interests of the British people at all costs.
-
1 sparky.
-
Your comments are becoming feeble and irrelevant.

3. LuxuryBalloon , Wednesday, May 07, 2025, 07:59:

I think it is great that the UK controls the Channel Islands: 85 miles from England yet only 14 miles from France. And adding a 6 miles fishing exclusion zone around the islands really screwed the smaller French fishing boats who had struggled to gather enough evidence to allow them to fish in our waters.
We need to lay a tax-payer-funded 85 miles electric cable to the Channel Islands ASAP to make them independent from EU electricity. Maybe we can use the money saved from cancelling the winter fuel allowance?

4. Ashley Great Britain , Wednesday, May 07, 2025, 08:50:

3 lux ball.
-
Very pedantic and EU sympathetic comments.
-
There's already power lines between the UK and Channel islands, payed for years ago with UK money.
How about we produce all our own energy from relatively clean hydrogen and nuclear! Then we won't have to rely on malevolent EU friends and partners. With any luck our bills will also drastically reduce, maybe, possibly.

5. LuxuryBalloon , Wednesday, May 07, 2025, 11:17:

4 Ashley … Jersey has three multi-million-pound supply cables to France, providing around 95% of the island’s electricity.
As long as our Channel Islands are dependent on electricity from France, we are vulnerable to blackmail by France. Nothing pedantic or EU sympathetic about that.

6. Gazzablack , Wednesday, May 07, 2025, 18:36:

5, LB
.
They're not.
When France threatened to turn off the supply the Jerseymen pointed out that they would simply use their own fossil fuel power stations.

7. John Jones , Wednesday, May 07, 2025, 21:32:

This is all spilt milk - yes the French are duplicitous - this is a given.
I'm trying to understand the value add of today's post - it's history - get over it.
Barrel scraping has a place - is now the right time?
Plus, we've got a feeble quaisi socialist government only to willing to appease Brussels for sweet FA.
Get over it - suck it up - vote for a new Government who will play hardball with France.
This is a bitter pill - that can't be sweetened..

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‘Five days that took Brexit to the brink’ - Part IIFive fishing days until Emperor Emmanuel’s ‘guerre franco-brittanique’?