“France has shown a bit of renunciation”, regrets Dimitri Rogoff, president of the Normandy Regional Fisheries Committee, on Friday November 19 on franceinfo, the day after the Minister of the Sea at the Fisheries Conference mentioned a “fleet exit plan” to compensate fishermen whose vessels would not obtain a license in British waters and would ultimately remain docked.
franceinfo: What state of mind do the fishermen have after the mention of this plan?
Dimitri Rogoff: We are still in the idea that France has shown a little renunciation. These announcements, we take them a little badly. We also tell ourselves that on the British side, they will rather have a smile and that does not make us happy. We know that the discussions will continue, but we have been discussing it for 11 months, there are still sticking points on some licenses.
“Moreover, we are focusing too much on these few licenses, while there are other subjects such as replacement boats, everything relating to quotas, to the technical measures that will be put in place.”
Dimitri Rogoff, President of the Normandy Regional Fisheries Committeeto franceinfo
We say to ourselves that we have missed something a bit. France should not wait for Europe to rebel, to show signs of protest. The government should have done it unilaterally to mark the occasion, to ensure that the discussions go a little further. We can tell that they are dragging around a bit and that we haven’t hit the table hard enough with our fists. (…) There are many other subjects to come which will be extremely impacting for fishing, perhaps more impacting than these licenses.
Are Norman fishermen going to use this fleet exit plan?
We don’t want the fleet exit plan. We don’t need it, it will only concern a few units, but not all colleagues in France are in the same situation. Moreover, the fleet exit plan was planned before Brexit. We were planning a no-deal so we had planned a strong fleet exit plan – which is still available – and some fishermen had requested a fleet exit plan long before Brexit, because they are in difficult situations, in particular in the Hauts-de-France, on the sole, on certain species which are coming to lack. It is a tool that is available, provided for a certain number of scenarios, Mediterranean fishermen in particular had kept a fleet exit plan also because they are in difficulty. It was put too much forward in relation to the Brexit problem but it is part of the support solutions. This plan is one of the elements at our disposal. We must not see things too simply: there is work that will continue with the United Kingdom but it will be long and we must put this long time to good use to do other things around fishing and in particular take individual solutions for those who need them.
The president of the Renew group in the European Parliament, Stéphane Séjourné, declared on franceinfo that one should “never trust Boris Johnson”, the British Prime Minister. Is this a difficulty for you?
Yes, and that’s one of our problems. Boris Johnson, I don’t know him, but we can clearly see his procrastination in his ideas, in his way of presenting things. The subject is no longer fishermen but political postures with the future of Ireland in particular as a backdrop. Our problem seems very small in there and we have the impression of being instrumentalised.