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Jersey’s Minister for External Relations Ian Gorst said on Wednesday that a power cut to the self-governing U.K. dependency, just 22 kilometers off the French coast, would “seem disproportionate.”
The threat to cut Jersey’s electricity supply, which came from French Sea Minister Annick Girardin, is the latest escalation in a row between France and the U.K. over post-Brexit fishing licenses. Gorst was responding to Girardin’s warning on BBC Radio 4’s Today program.
French fishermen are struggling to obtain fishing licences allowing them to keep working in U.K. waters, including in Jersey. They must show they have been fishing in these waters from 2012 to 2016 using GPS data, which some don’t have. Retaliatory protests in France have included threats to block the port of Calais, as well as blocking fish arriving from British waters.
During a parliamentary question session on Tuesday, Girardin gently reminded the U.K. that just as France depends on the U.K. for fish, Jersey needs French electricity to fry it.
“As you know, the [Brexit] agreement contains retaliatory measures … So as far as Jersey is concerned, I would remind you, for example, of the transport of electricity via submarine cables. So we have the means, and even though I’m sorry it has come to this, we will do so if we have to,” she told the French parliament.
“This is not the first threat that the French have made,” Gorst said, “to either Jersey or to the United Kingdom” since the Brexit deal was struck.
“This is a new deal, there were always going to be teething problems,” he added. Gorst said he has been in communication with the European Commission and the U.K. government to work out a solution. “We in Jersey, of course, have a history of dealing with the French.”
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