If the EU fails to give French fishermen 73 licences to operate in UK waters, the EU could impose customs duties on British goods, a French minister said.
Cl ment Beaune, the French minister for Europe, made a threat in a television interview. After leaving, it is the latest chapter in the battle over fishing licences.
In an interview, Beaune warned Liz Truss, the British foreign secretary who took over the Brexit portfolio after Lord Frost s resignation, that her predecessor's strategy of seeking the division of Europeans had never worked.
Beaune told France 2, the state TV channel, the British tried in recent months. We reacted and we obtained a lot of licences because of this firmness. The European Commission, which has the responsibility for taking action against Britain in disputes over the Brexit deal, appeared less gung-ho than Beaune, saying only that it would study the French request for litigation.
Two weeks ago, Virginijus Sinkevicius, the Lithuanian EU commissioner in charge of fishing, appeared to imply the row had been settled when he welcomed the award by Britain of 80 additional licences to French fishermen as a very important step. France said that the move meant its fishermen had received 93 per cent of the licences they had requested to continue working in British waters after Brexit. President Macron's government insists that 73 fishermen are still without licences and is pushing the EU to take legal action over them.
Beaune implied that the EU was certain to back France. He said he was due to meet European Commission representatives on January 4 before the launch of litigation at the Arbitration Tribunal, which was set up to judge disputes between the EU and the UK under the Brexit Trade and Co-operation Agreement.
Beaune said that it is a signal that the Europeans are all together asking the British to apply the agreement. There can be reciprocal measures like customs duties and other things if the British don't.
The EU is its biggest market. If the British don't respect the agreement, they won't have free access to the market. Under the deal, EU vessels that had fished in British waters between 2012 and 2016 were allowed to continue doing so. There has been arguments over the level of proof required to show that vessels meet the criteria, with the UK demanding evidence from electronic tracking systems.
Most European boats were able to provide such evidence, but the French fleet has a number of vessels less than 12 m long that are not equipped with electronic tracking devices. The dispute has been centred on whether such vessels could provide written evidence like logbooks.
A spokesman for the European Commission said: "For requested but not approved licences, we will examine the legal circumstances around every requested licence that has not been granted."