Abraracourcix à Asterix: Pêche à Jersey -comment résoude-t-on cette embrouille?

The answer may be simpler than initially appears.

The Normans appear to believe that by cutting off electricity or by threatening the Island's Finance industry with EU reprisals they can exert pressure on what they mistakenly and presumptuously deride as a paradis fiscal.

In attempting to short circuit the issuance of the permits that each French vessel seeking to exercise what they refer to as ancestral fishing rights by shunting the documentary evidence provided by the vessels seeking permits from Jersey into a bureaucratic siding somewhere between Caen and Paris, they have perhaps overstepped the mark. See Ouest France. It may be an old Resistance technique, but here slightly counterproductive.

The TECA, agreed by the EU - dare I say on France's behalf, provides that only Jersey has the right and duty to administer fishing in its territorial sea. The same principle now applies to French administration of their coastal waters in which some Jersey vessels have historically fished.

The anomaly of the prior Granville Bay Agreement was that it did not follow international practice. Under the Granville Agreement, which was superseded by the TECA, it was the French fishing authorities which administered the issuance of permits to fish in Jersey waters. That was incidentally anomalous as in most Fishing Treaties it is the coastal State, here Jersey, that administers permits as to fishing in its waters.

The TECA now reads:

Article?493

Sovereign rights of coastal States exercised by the Parties

The Parties affirm that sovereign rights of coastal States exercised by the Parties for the purpose of exploring, exploiting, conserving and managing the living resources in their waters should be conducted pursuant to and in accordance with the principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

and article 495 (1) (g) "waters" (of a Party) means:

(i) in respect of the Union, by way of derogation from Article?774(1), the EEZs of the Member States and their territorial seas;

(ii) in respect of the United Kingdom, its EEZ and its territorial sea, excluding for the purposes of Articles 500 and?501 and Annex 38 the territorial sea adjacent to the Bailiwick of Guernsey, the Bailiwick of Jersey and the Isle of Man;

as to fishing permits:

Jersey has the sole right and indeed the obligation to grant permits to vessels showing a valid fishing history in Jersey waters over the past four years. Michel Barnier negotiated this. It is therefore curious is it not that the French administration, as an organic whole, then proceeded to block the transfer to Paris of the documentary evidence provided by their vessels and by that intermediary to the TECA Committee in Brussels for onward transmission under TECA FISH to London and then Jersey.

At the risk of irony, it is curious that the Norman fishermen appear quite capable of compiling documents and evidence and ensuring delivery of a dossier when applying for request for subsidies for their oversized vessels, but not so "efficient" when it comes to applying for a foreign permit which does not suit them. That might not be their fault.

What is also important to bear in mind is that it is settled international law that, whilst innocent passage of a vessel through another State's coastal waters does not require a permit from that coastal state, fishing is not and has never been "innocent passage", as it takes the resources of the coastal State concerned. The issue is one of "own resources". The fish and shellfish in Jersey's territorial water's are Jersey's not "Franco-Norman" or "Franco-Breton".

Under the TECA, the situation has been restored to that standard international law position. Jersey is responsible for its Territorial waters, not the United Kingdom, nor France.

That transfer of responsibility has no effect upon the taxation jurisdiction and position in relation to Jersey territorial waters. Whilst Jersey has not chosen to tax French vessels, yet, on the profits or income derived from the fish and crustaceans taken from Jersey waters, its legislation can be applied to do so as it stands at present. Jersey's tax policy is insular, it only taxes Jersey source income and the worldwide income of Jersey residents within its jurisdiction and power. As a small island of 100,000 people, it does not have the resources or the need to do otherwise. Neither does it subsidise its fishing fleet in any manner similar to the French state and regions.

It is also clear that French fishing vessels can escape French taxation on their fishing activity in Jersey waters by using the French territorial system of taxation to assert that there is no complete business cycle carried out in France as the fish is caught in Jersey waters, not French. They would however be subject to French tax on a business cycle which involved catching fish in their own waters.

At the risk of poking fun at the OCDE, sorry OECD, and BEPS, I am not too sure about which régime is the fiscally privileged one. Is it the Jersey régimé where Jersey boats are taxed at 20% on the distributed profits arsing from their catch landed in France or their French colleagues who are simply outside their indigenous French basis of taxation.

As the permits to do so are no longer issued by France, and are severed from that last territorial administrative link the French vessels might wish to take some decent tax advice before protesting too much.

In one hypothesis, they could find their boats arrested seised and sold the next time they choose to camp within musket range inside the Port of Saint Helier.