Grégory Guida, Minister of Home Affairs of Jersey, is surprised Tuesday, November 2 on franceinfo at the will of the French to “to negotiate” in the conflict over fishing licenses between France and the British. “The word I hear the most in France is the word ‘negotiate’. However, when you have signed a contract, it is the end of negotiations. You apply the contract”, he explains. According to Grégory Guida, Jersey “cuts in two to try to give as many licenses as possible to the boats” provided that the French fishermen provide evidence but “they never happened”.
franceinfo: What do you say to French fishermen?
Gregory Guida: The principle of the agreement is to conserve the fishing effort. If he was fishing, I say a random number, 10,000 tonnes of seafood in 2017 or 2018 in Jersey waters, then in 2021 and 2022 10,000 tonnes must be caught. This is extremely important because we are talking about sustainable fishing and this is the basis of the contract. If you read the contract, the first two pages on Jersey, and on fishing in the UK, are on stock management and sustainable fishing. So this effort must absolutely not increase. If we add more boats without limitation, the effort will increase, it is absolutely inevitable.
But if we change boats, no license?
The principle is that you don’t have to have a bigger boat. If you have a 7m boat and buy a 25m boat, the fishing effort will change. This is something that is indeed still under negotiation. If you are in your boat, it can sink. It’s going to take another. We have no problem with the principle of a new boat. On the other hand, it is an international principle, it is not something that we invented in Jersey. So if all the boats from France fishing in Jersey went from 7 to 25m overnight, you imagine what that would do to stocks.
What is the agreement in terms of anticipation for French fishermen?
The terms of prior art are extremely simple and extremely generous. It’s something that annoys me a little bit about this attitude. If you fished eleven days in Jersey waters, in 2017 or 2018 or 2019. Not all three years, but any of the three years, you have a license. It is extremely generous. When we talk about anticipation, we are talking about having the majority of your work in the waters of the island. It really is not complicated. It is really generous.
On Monday you gave new licenses. Did this make it possible to continue negotiations and avoid sanctions?
I do not think so. The word I hear the most in France is the word “negotiate”. However, when you have signed a contract, it is the end of the negotiations. You apply the contract, you apply the terms of the contract and we have done this scrupulously since January 1st. If you can prove eleven days of fishing, any of the three years in Jersey, you have a license. However, this evidence has come to us in small quantities, late, of poor quality and often elsewhere, with errors that we recognize.
“Let’s be clear! French fishermen must fill out fishing logs. This is a legal obligation, there is no way out. If you don’t fill out your fishing logs, it’s illegal . You are fishing illegally. “
Grégory Guida, Minister of Home Affairs of Jerseyto franceinfo
If you give us 11 fishing sheets with the Granville Bay marked above, you have a license. In some cases, we are the ones who brought in the data because we weren’t receiving them from Brussels. We bought the data from AIS [Système d’Identification Automatique], marine transponder data to confirm that boats that we knew were in the water because we knew that such and such a boat was there all week. We did not see the data coming from France and so we did the research. We cut ourselves in half to try to license the boats as much as possible, provided there is proof. And that evidence never came.