The president of France, Emmanuel Macron , suspended this Monday the sanctions against the United Kingdom, which were due to take effect on Tuesday, and has shown his confidence in the negotiations on the dispute over fishing licenses in the English Channel.
” We are not going to impose sanctions while we are negotiating,” Macron assured the media from Glasgow, where he is on the occasion of COP26, an announcement with which he stops for the moment the sanctions he had announced, including the ban on disembarkation of British ships or the reinforcement of controls to them, among others, reports the French newspaper ‘Le Parisien’.
In the framework of the fishing crisis, the negotiations between Paris and London, together with the European Commission, have taken place this Monday and will lead to a new meeting between the parties on Thursday, November 4 in the French capital, as announced by the minister Briton for Brexit, David Frost, through social networks.
Frost has confirmed the holding of this meeting in response to an invitation from France to continue with an “in-depth discussion on the difficulties in the implementation of the agreements between the European Union and the United Kingdom” , thus continuing the dialogue initiated in the last day, as the French Secretary of State for European Affairs, Clemente Beaune, has pointed out in publications on the same social network.
‘We have received the first signals from the British authorities to speed up trade. A response to the latest proposals from the French authorities is expected on Wednesday, ”said Beaune about the latest talks.
“To allow the open dialogue to continue, the measures announced and prepared by France will not be applied before this meeting and the examination of the new British responses regarding fishing licenses,” he also advanced.
Given this, the British minister for Brexit has welcomed France’s announcement of the suspension of sanctions and has reiterated its commitment to continue with “an intensive dialogue” on the crisis, including “considering new licenses to support the remaining applications.”
He also welcomed France’s “recognition that in-depth discussions are needed to resolve the variety of difficulties” in relations between London and the European Union.
Frost will be the one to meet with Beaune in Paris on Thursday, continuing with the negotiations whose resumption has been announced by Macron, who added that the meetings are taking place on “the basis of the proposals” that he himself made to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Prior to the announcement of the suspension of the sanctions, the Foreign Minister of the United Kingdom, Liz Truss, gave the French Government a period of 48 hours this Monday to withdraw its “threats” in this regard and assured that London would take measures in the face of behavior. which he considers “unfit for an ally.”
Crisis and sanctions
The French Executive last week put on the table a battery of possible sanctions, including a ban on the docking of British boats, in response to the reduction of permits granted to French fishermen to fish in Canal waters. Paris does not rule out limiting electricity supply either. About 1,700 European vessels are licensed to fish in British waters.
The British minister for Brexit confirmed on Saturday that his country is “actively” contemplating the launch of the mechanism for the resolution of disputes stipulated in the exit agreements of the European Union to solve the current fisheries dispute with France.
For its part, the French Government insists that almost half of the license applications submitted by French fishermen have not yet been accepted despite having submitted the documents requested by the British authorities to corroborate compliance with the Brexit agreements. .
Under the Brexit trade agreement reached at the end of 2020, European fishermen can operate in British waters as long as they can demonstrate that they previously operated there.
