UK could take legal action against France over fishing row, says Liz Truss
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Liz Truss: France has made completely unacceptable threats
The UK is prepared to take legal action against France over the ongoing row about post-Brexit fishing rights, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has warned.
Last month, the UK and Jersey denied permits to dozens of French boats to operate in their waters.
In retaliation, France threatened to block British boats from some of its ports and cut electricity to Jersey.
Ms Truss told the BBC that France was acting "unfairly" in setting a deadline for issuing more fishing permits.
France says that, unless this happens by Tuesday, it will prevent British fishing boats from disembarking at its ports, and step up border checks on UK goods.
Officials in Paris have also threatened to tighten security checks on British boats, and increase checks on trucks going to and from the UK.
Representatives from the European Commission, France, the UK and the Channel Islands are holding talks via video link on Monday afternoon.
A commission spokesperson said they hoped the meeting would bring a "swift solution on the outstanding issues".
France has accused the UK of making a "political choice" by rejecting "more than 40%" of French boats' applications to fish in UK and Channel Island waters.
But the UK's Brexit minister Lord Frost has said the UK had been "very generous" in granting 98% of applications from EU vessels.
Ms Truss told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that fishing licences had been awarded to French boats "entirely in accordance" with the post-Brexit deal between the EU and UK.
She warned that unless France withdrew its threats, the UK was prepared to "use the dispute resolution mechanism in the trade deal we signed with the EU to take action against the French".
"We're simply not going to roll over in the face of these threats," she added.
For Labour, shadow business secretary Ed Miliband told Sky News he "didn't like the way the French had behaved" and urged both sides to "lower the temperature" of the debate.
Emmanuel Macron is under massive pressure from the nationalist right in France in the lead-up to next year's presidential election.
He has a lot to gain from the metaphorical waving of the French flag, being seen to be standing up to "perfidious Albion", as the French have sometimes referred to the Brits (or the English, depending on the exact moment in history) for centuries.
Boris Johnson too knows that a row with the French - or with Brussels - plays well with much of his Conservative Party and many of his supporters.
A useful diversion, say critics, from domestic problems like soaring gas prices, haulier shortages and studies, like the recent one published by the Office for Budget Responsibility, suggesting that Brexit will cost the UK economy more than Covid-19.
On Sunday, Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron met for 30 minutes during the G20 summit but failed to resolved the problem.
The UK government said it was "up to France" to draw back from its threats, while Mr Macron insisted the ball was "in Britain's court".
UK-French tensions were further inflamed on Friday, when a letter emerged from French Prime Minister Jean Castex to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggesting the fishing dispute was an opportunity to show that EU countries risked more damage from leaving the bloc than staying in.
Mr Johnson said he was "puzzled to read a letter from the French prime minister explicitly asking for Britain to be punished for leaving the EU".
Although fishing is a small part of both the British and French economies, it has been a highly sensitive political issue throughout Brexit.
The latest row began after a British trawler was seized by France and another fined during checks off Le Havre on Thursday.