SOME 500 French fishermen who have blocked the English Channel ports of Calais, Dunkirk and Boulogne with 100 boats since Tuesday are demanding that the French government change European quotas for cod and sole.
Minister for agriculture and fisheries Michel Barnier is to meet representatives of the fishermen’s unions this morning. The fishermen say they will maintain the blockade regardless of the meeting with the minister.
They have already rejected Mr Barnier’s offer of financial assistance. “I propose talking with them, as we have for several months, about accompanying them economically and perhaps also about economic accompaniment for each ship, for each of their businesses,” Mr Barnier told France Info radio.
Government spokesman Luc Chatel said: “France didn’t drop the fishermen. I remind you that France obtained a 30 per cent increase in cod quotas for the eastern Channel this year.”
“We don’t want money; especially not money. We just want to be able to work,” Olivier Leprêtre, captain of a fishing boat in Boulogne told Reuters. Stéphane Pinto, a CFDT trade unionist said there can be “no question of talking about financial aid. We want to discuss quotas.”
The EU Commission however refuses to renegotiate quotas, “quite simply because the quotas are decided by member states at the fishing council in December every year”, a spokeswoman for fisheries commissioner Joe Borg said.
“This decision is based on scientific advice. The solution is not to increase quotas, which would deplete stocks of fish and ruin the fishing fleets.”
The fishermen claim stocks are plentiful and that quotas should not apply to small-scale fishing.
The ports of Roscoff and Cherbourg, through which ferry traffic to and from Ireland transits, have not been affected, though Irish lorry drivers travelling through Britain may be blocked.
Jacques Bigot, national secretary of the CFTC fishermen’s union, warned fishermen “may be joined soon by the ports of Dieppe and Le Havre or even Cherbourg”. In Calais, the CFDT union threatened to block the Channel tunnel this morning “out of solidarity”.
The blockade was lifted for a few minutes at Dunkirk yesterday morning to enable a ferry carrying hundreds of passengers to leave. Would-be passengers camped overnight in the parking lot at Calais. Some cashed in their ferry tickets and took the train instead.
Marine Le Pen, vice-president of the anti-EU National Front, denounced what she called “the desire of the European Union to destroy French fishing” and “break the boats”.