The patience of France with the United Kingdom is at its lowest odds and its Minister for European Affairs, Clement Beaune, has decided to move directly to threats due to London’s low acceptance rates of the licenses they are granting to French fishermen. The threat, made in an interview on the station Europe1, has been that of cut off the power supply to the country on the other side of the Canal. If fulfilled, it would be a new headache for the British, who have sweeks suffering supply problems both in supermarkets and at gas stations.
“The British Isles depend on our supply. They believe that they can live on their own and slander Europe too ”, has criticized Beaune about the behavior that the United Kingdom is having when it comes to putting into practice its exit from the European Union. “Brexit is populism in action, and it has proven to be a tragic failure”, he sentenced during the interview.
The bad relations between London and Paris due to how to manage their agreements after leaving the EU goes back a long way. A similar threat regarding energy was heard recently on behalf of the Jersey’s delay in issuing licenses and the shortage a french ships in accordance with the terms of the UK’s post-Brexit trade deal with Brussels. Of the 170 applications, only 75 were approved.
Now a similar situation is occurring. London has only authorized 12 of the 47 requests presented by small French boats to fish in its waters. The British Government’s argument is that they have not been able to prove that they already operated in the area before. This situation has deeply annoyed the French minister who has reactivated the threat of cutting off the electricity supply to the United Kingdom. A powerful weapon if you consider that the British Isles are 95% dependent on the electricity that comes to them from France through the submarine cables connecting both countries.
The escalation of tension is increasing and Beaune recalled that the agreement reached with Brussels must “be fully implemented”. Otherwise, he warns, “we will take European or national measures to put pressure on the United Kingdom.”
And that’s where a power outage comes in, because “the UK depends on our energy exports, they think they can live alone while also hitting Europe and since it doesn’t work, they engage in aggressive overcoming.”
EDF Energy, a French state company, is in charge of producing one fifth of the electricity consumed in the UK and it is its main supplier of electricity with more than five million customers. Which gives an idea of what it would mean to cut the supply.
Lord Frost, ministro del Brexit, has already responded by ensuring that it is unreasonable to think that the UK is acting in bad faith in granting fishing licenses and stresses that, from his point of view, they have been “extremely generous”. In addition, he points out, as he collects Yahoo UK, that in the European Union “threats are resorted to fairly quickly”.
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