Lord Frost has criticised a French minister for threatening to cut off the UK’s imported energy supply amid escalating tensions over post-Brexit fishing licences.
The Brexit minister claimed it was “unreasonable” to suggest the UK was acting in bad faith when it came to allocating post-Brexit fishing licences to French boats and urged Paris to “keep things in proportion”.
It came after Clement Beaune, France’s Europe minister, said on Tuesday it would “take European or national measures to exert pressure on the UK” after it emerged that the UK had rejected a number of applications by French boats to fish in British waters.
The government confirmed last month it had approved just 12 of the 47 applications it had received from French small boats, though Lord Frost suggested that Britain had been “extremely generous” to European Union requests.
Mr Beaune told French radio station Europe 1 that the Trade and Co-operation Agreement (TCA) agreed as part of the Brexit divorce deal should be “implemented fully”.
Asked how Paris would retaliate if it was not, he responded: “The UK depends on our energy exports, they think they can live alone while also beating up on Europe and, given that it doesn’t work, they engage in aggressive one-upmanship.”
Speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative party conference on Tuesday, Mr Frost accused France of being disingenuous over the UK’s position on fishing access.
“We have granted 98 per cent of the licence applications from EU boats to fish in our waters according to the different criteria in the Trade and Co-operation Agreement, so we do not accept that we are not abiding by that agreement,” he said.
“We have been extremely generous and the French, focusing in on a small category of boats and claiming we have behaved unreasonably, I think is not really a fair reflection of the efforts we have made.”
The Cabinet minister conceded that Britain “would have liked a different sort of fisheries deal” in the Brexit deal but said the UK was striving to deliver on the agreed terms.
“We agreed this deal and we are implementing in good faith, so I think it is unreasonable to suggest we are not,” he continued.
“If there is a reaction from France, they will have to persuade others in the EU to go along with it, and it does need to be proportionate.”
It follows a long-running dispute between the UK and France over post-Brexit fishing rights. In May, Boris Johnson dispatched two Royal Navy patrol boats to protect Jersey from a feared blockade by French fishing vessels.
Paris was also enraged after figures revealed that the Jersey government had rejected 75 of the 170 licence applications it had received from France.
Jersey gets 95 per cent of its electricity supply from France, with just under half of the UK’s electricity imports, as of 2020, coming from the same source.
A spokeswoman for the government of Jersey said: “Jersey has followed the process set down by the Trade and Co-operation Agreement throughout the process of allocating licences.
“Jersey’s electricity service is underpinned by a long-term contract with EDF and we do not anticipate any interruptions in supply.”
