Lord Frost accuses Frenchman of being “unreasonable” after threatening energy supplies

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Lord Frost has criticized a French minister for threatening to cut off energy supplies imported from the UK amid rising tensions over post-Brexit fishing licenses.

The Brexit minister claimed it was “unreasonable” to suggest that the UK was acting in bad faith when it came to allocating post-Brexit fishing licenses to French boats, and urged Paris to “keep things proportionate”.

This came after Clement Bonn, France’s Europe minister, said on Tuesday he would “take European or national measures to put pressure on the UK” after it emerged that the UK had rejected a number of requests from French boats to fish in British waters.

The government confirmed last month that it had approved only 12 of the 47 requests it received from small French boats, although Lord Frost noted Britain had been “extremely generous” to the EU’s requests.

Mr Boone told French radio station Europe 1 that the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) agreed as part of the Brexit divorce deal should be “fully implemented”.

Asked how Paris would retaliate if it weren’t, he replied: “The UK depends on our energy exports, they think they can live on their own while also overcoming Europe, and since that doesn’t work, they engage in an aggressive one- ingenuity.”

Speaking at a side event at the Conservative Party conference on Tuesday, Frost accused France of being disingenuous about the UK’s stance on access hunting.

“We have granted 98 per cent of license requests from EU boats to fish in our waters according to the various criteria in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, so we do not accept that we are not complying with this agreement,” he said. .

“We have been very generous and the French, focusing on a small class of boats and claiming to have acted unreasonably, which I think is not a fair reflection of the efforts we have made.”

The Cabinet minister acknowledged Britain “would have liked a different kind of fishing deal” in the Brexit deal, but said the UK was striving to meet the terms agreed.

He continued, “We agreed on this deal and we are implementing it in good faith, so I think it is unreasonable to say that we are not.”

“If there is a reaction from France, they will have to persuade others in the EU to agree to it, and it has to be proportionate.”

It comes on the heels of 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 frightening siege by French trawlers.

Paris was also incensed after figures revealed that the Jersey government had rejected 75 of the 170 license applications it received from France.

Jersey gets 95 percent of its electricity supply from France, with less than half of the UK’s electricity imports, as of 2020, coming from the same source.

A Jersey Government spokeswoman said: “Jersey followed the process outlined in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement throughout the licensing allocation process.

“Jersey’s electricity service is backed by a long-term contract with EDF and we do not anticipate any disruption to the supply.”

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