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Courtesy of the Telegraph.
The usually uncontested waters of the English channel have been roiled by clashes between French and English fishing boats in a rapidly escalating row over scallops - and Brexit is the underlying cause.
In scenes that will have the tabloids dusting off old tropes about the battle of Agincourt - where Henry V bravely fought off our continental neighbours against all odds - six English boats held their nerve as they were rammed, insulted and pelted with rocks by 35 French ones. At the heart of the dispute is the allegation that English fishermen have been abusing a legal loophole to take more than their fair share of Normandy scallops, which the French say are essential to their cuisine, stripping the seabed of the delicacy before they were allowed to do so. To complicate matters further, a gentleman’s agreement which in past years allowed both sides to fish for scallops peacefully, without depriving each other of their catch, has collapsed. So where is all the rage coming from? One of the sources of the bad blood is Britain’s looming departure from the European Union and its fishing policies.
Brexit - and the scallop fishing season - is at the heart of this conflict Though the fishing industry accounts for less than 0.5 per cent of UK GDP, it has an oversized capacity to stoke political emotions for Britain, which watched helplessly as the trade was decimated by the EU during the 70s.
Here we look at how Brexit is exacerbating an increasingly tense relationship between British and French scallop dredgermen. Why are the French so angry? The French are resentful towards foreign vessels dredging scallops in the EU’s fishing zones during certain times of the year. The French, you see, are not allowed to harvest scallops between October 1 and May 15 beyond a 12-mile exclusion zone off their coast due to national environmental laws. For the British, however, no such ban exists. This means we are free to dredge up plenty of scallops beyond the EU’s “exclusion zones” - narrow stretches of coast reserved for individual EU countries. French fears that the English were hoovering up the Normandy seabed as they sat swabbing their decks in Le Havre appear to have been the catalyst for this week’s spat.
Scallops are merely a symptom of deep-seated unease between English and French fishermen. The latter are extremely worried about losing access to the rich supply of fish in British waters after Brexit.
This is because the UK is due to leave the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), which in 1973 carved up British waters into fishing zones thrown open to European trawlers. Since then, fisherman from France and other EU countries have grown hugely dependent on fishing stocks from British waters, as the CFP allows them to fish pretty much anywhere provided they do not overstep strict quotas.
Vessels from the port of Boulogne, for example, spend up to 80 per cent of their time at sea in UK waters - so it would be no exaggeration to say that their livelihood depends on Britain being part of the CFP. For decades, life as a French fishermen was rather wonderful; meanwhile the CFP’s bias towards European trawlers decimated the British fishing industry.
This all changes after Brexit: the UK will regain control of its territorial waters and be free to set its own quotas and decide who is allowed to fish where. Along the £350m for the NHS, major gains for the British fi shing industry were touted as one of the key reasons to vote for Brexit in the referendum.
The pro-Brexit group Fishing For Leave estimates Brexit will therefore provide British fishermen with more than three times as many fish as they catch now. This heaped pressure on Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, to pledge a “better deal” for UK fishermen.
In other words, after Brexit life should to get much easier for British fishermen and much harder for their Gallic counterparts. Isn’t it a bit rich for the French to be angry about us filching their fish, then?
UK fishermen have been watching Brexit with thinly-concealed schadenfreude, and some believe that leaving the CFP will dole out some long overdue payback for the French. By the same token, French trawlers and unions are all too aware that an independent UK fishing industry puts their own jobs at stake. This has left them irritable and restless, pushing their guarded and vaguely suspicious attitude towards the British into outright bitterness. Meanwhile, French unions are lobbying the EU very hard to effectively neuter Britain’s post-Brexit fishing policy by ensuring it stays as close as possible to the status quo. Sounds like the Brexit Fishing Wars are only just beginning? Though the scallop wars look nasty - and there’s nothing nastier than a gaggle of angry Frenchman pelting Englishmen with rocks as they go about their work - they will look tame in comparison to the looming row over the CFP.
Industry sources say the British Government, despite its promises to create a fully independent post-Brexit fishing policy, is privately planning to use UK waters as leverage in trade talks. For example, the Telegraph understands that the UK plans to offer EU fishermen liberal access to British fishing zones in exchange for tariff-free access to EU markets.