Fishing permits - the ongoing (Parisian) Fish-Fight ...

It is impossible to get any sense out of a French politician in a run up to an election, so the current AC-DC threats from M. Beaune and les Petites Sirènes should be taken with a dose of salt or sea water.

Mr Beaune has now confirmed that the permit documentation retained in a bureaucratic siding between Normandy ¨Paris and Brussels has now been released to the British and therefore to Jersey. That remains to be confirmed as there is little trust left. Perhaps they were embarrassed by the lack of fishing history evidenced in the dossiers déposés?

He has also admitted that the administrative policies involved in registereing replacement vessels to replace those retiring needs addressing, so the French are not necessarily in a good position. The bouys from Boulogne may well have to remain east of the Seine estuary.

Ordering the EDF to stop supplying or diminishing supply to Jersey is a breach of contract which is not necessarily covered by a force majeure clause.

The effet de prince or, in this case de princesse, is no longer a constitutionally valid reasoning and in any event they technically do not have a constitutional basis upon which to act when Jersey is doing no more than following the TECA provisions specific to its waters.

The other Parisian threat was to impose customs duties on Jersey vessels landing their catch in Norman and Breton ports when in fact the French vessels landing catch taken from Jersey wates woud be exempt. Adding quantitative to qualitative restrictions in breach of the TECA? The price of Oysters at La Moule en Folie near the Gare Montparnasse can only go up.

The TECA was negotiated under Michel Barnier, in a prior life in charge of Maritime affairs at the EU Commission. The French populace (demos is inappropriate in this ochlocratic context) appear not to be able to read the provisions or draw the honest conclusions in the background. It is always more fun not to. The Jersey administration is not beholden to French rights or procedures in Jersey waters. It is not because you ask for it that you have a right to it. Same goes for the subsidies upon which the larger French vessels rely and to which the Jersey vessels do not have access. Jersey has never subsidised its agricultue or its fisheries. That is a form of conservation measure alien to the French system.

The irony is that it is the smaller vessels, presumably less subsidised, who may have had or rather allege that they have had difficulty in providing location data for the historical fishing history. Why have they not kept the log-books which they are required to do under French law? Jersey is perfectly justified in asking for these administrative records required under maritime law.

The irony is that were the undocumented vessels to be owned by a French company subject to Imp?t sur les sociétés, fishing in Jersey waters and landing in France would not have constituted a complete business cycle and would have escaped French taxation. P?erhaps they should have taken better tax advice? Were ces petits malins hoist on their own fiscal petard? Of course, when indulging in political name-calling, one tends to forget one's own fiscal foibles or régimes fiscales privilégiés. Just wondering how long the other EU States are going to stand alongside les grandes gueulles Fran?aies in this display of self-centred arrogant bullying.It is not their playground and they are there by permission, not otherwise.

Permits can always be revoked in the same manner.

I stress here that the civil servants in both jurisdictions including the EU, but perhaps less so in the case of the politicised Commission generally have to work well with each other despite or even against the policial idiosycrasies if not idiocies perpetrated by the politicians to whom they have to respond.

Is it getting to the stage where government sponsored blockades will amount to an act of war and certainly not to the mere exercise of innocent passage. Perhaps Jersey should consider upgrading its fire fighting capacities in its sole commercial port of St Helier by a couple of land mounted water cannon? Perhaps the City of London can lend us their Wasserwurfers so that any fruther French style political demonstrations can rapidly be cooled off. The French appaers top beloievtat their manner of violent or robust manifestation demonstration is universally acceptable norm, so doubtless the young artisan pêcheur interviewed on France 3 yesterday could not pbject to his boat being "titillated" by a water cannon. By way of comarison, the Jersey Corn riots cnsisted of a wale kint town, intridingf unforcinbel on a States meeting and requiring Lemprière the secretary of the meeting to insert the objections into the minuets of the meeting.

Perhaps a more norman and peaceful approach?

Or rather is the current French unilateral belligerancy an attempt to retreat from Moscow with a little less political damage than Bonaparte?