'We will not roll over': UK gives France '48 hours' to withdraw threats over fishing and Jersey

The UK has given France 48 hours to withdraw its threats over fishing and the Channel Islands, with Foreign Secretary Liz Truss issuing the warning: "We will not roll over."

The neighbour nations are locked in a war of words that is showing no sign of easing, with French President Emmanuel Macron threatening to introduce more stringent port checks on British boats amid a dispute over the fishing rights of French boats.

It comes after France seized a British vessel and charged its skipper in response to the UK denying licences for a number of French boats to fish in the waters around Jersey.

France says Britain's denial of licences is a breach of the Brexit trade deal signed by Boris Johnson and the EU in 2020 and has said the UK must make a “significant move” to ease the dispute before it takes further retaliatory measures.

A French minister, Clement Beaune, warned last week that France could increase prices for the electricity it provides to the British Channel Islands via undersea cables.

But the UK's foreign secretary said France must "withdraw" the threats - and "they need to do it within the next 48 hours".

If not, Ms Truss says the UK will "pursue dispute resolution under the EU trade deal, they are not following the terms of the trade deal in issuing these threats and we will follow through".

The move would see the UK take legal action "that would essentially compensate the UK for the action the French are taking".

Liz Truss tells France to back down:

French officials have warned they will bar UK fishing boats from some ports and tighten customs checks on lorries entering the country unless more licences are granted.

Last week ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston warned it could spark a trade war between the two nations of a resolution to the dispute is not found.

Mr Macron, who held talks with Boris Johnson at the G20 summit in Rome and will be attending the Cop26 climate change conference with the Prime Minister in Glasgow, said the ball is in the UK’s court.

“If the British don’t do any significant move, measures starting from November 2 will need to be implemented,” he warned on Sunday.

Downing Street said it was down to the French whether they carried out their threats in the row over post-Brexit fishing rights.

"It is entirely up to France if they choose to go ahead with the threats they have set out," the Prime Minister's official spokesman said.

"We continue to hope that they step away from the threats they have made."

The fishing row adds to the tensions around UK-European Union relations, with the dispute over the Brexit deal’s Northern Ireland Protocol also causing a diplomatic row with Brussels.

Ms Truss suggested Mr Macron’s hardline stance was motivated by domestic political concerns.

She told Sky News: “You might say there’s a French election coming up.”

The foreign secretary said the French had made “unreasonable threats” and the UK would take legal action “if the French don’t back down”.

“This issue needs to be resolved in the next 48 hours,” she added.

Meanwhile, discussions are due to continue in Brussels between UK and EU teams this week as they aim to find a solution to the disruption being caused by the Northern Ireland Protocol, designed as part of the Brexit deal to avoid a hard border in Ireland.

Brexit minister Lord Frost and European Commission vice-president Marcos Sefcovic are due to meet face-to-face on Friday to check-in on what progress has been made, with the politicians likely to discuss fishing once again.

Mr Sefcovic, writing in the Daily Telegraph, said he feared Britain was embarking on a “path of confrontation” in its refusal to back down on its stance that the European Court of Justice should not have an arbitration role in the protocol.

He said the EU had “gone the extra mile” with its own reform proposals but that the bloc had “limits”.

But Lord Frost, writing for the Policy Exchange think tank, said the EU had “destroyed cross-community consent” with an “overly strict” enforcement of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

He condemned the European Union for behaving “without regard to the huge political, economic and identity sensitivities” in Northern Ireland.

The protocol is the mechanism to avoid a hard border with Ireland by effectively keeping Northern Ireland within the EU’s single market for goods, an arrangement which has led to checks on products crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain.