France’s parliament has unanimously passed a non-binding resolution aimed at encouraging members of the EU to put Russian paramilitary group Wagner on its official list of terrorist organisations, opening up the possibilty of freezing the assets of it and its members, while media reports said a similar blacklisting was “imminent” by the UK and likely to be enacted within weeks.
Three French Members of the European Parliament, all from President Macron's party, have published a joint letter to the European Commission calling for action over recent incidents in Britain of raw sewage spills into the Channel and North Sea which they said 'seriously' endangers public health and the marine environment in France.
French interior minister Gérald Darmanin has accused the British authorities of 'a lack of humanity' over their 'completely unsuitable' arrangements for Ukrainian refugees in the French port of Calais where, he said, a lack of consular services led to 150 refugees trying to cross the Channel being told to seek visas in Paris or Brussels.
Speaking after a meeting in Calais on Sunday with European counterparts to discuss clandestine migration and people trafficking, following the deaths of at least 27 people trying to cross the Channel to the UK last Wednesday, France's interior minister spoke of the need to cooperate 'seriously' on the issue with London but 'without being held hostage by domestic British politics'.
The latest toll of the sinking of a dinghy carrying migrants attempting to cross the Channel from France to the UK on Wednesday is at least 27 dead, including seven women, one of whom was pregnant, and three children, while two survivors are critically ill in hospital.
The French government has withdrawn its threat to clog cross-Channel trade by zealous checks on commercial vehicles and to ban UK fishers from landing their catches in ports after Jersey offered fast-track approval for fishing permits for up to six French vessels, according to British media reports.
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said relations with France are fraught with 'turbulence' as diplomatic tensions mount in a post-Brexit dispute over the number of permits to be granted to French trawlers to fish in UK waters.
France has threatened to block UK fishing boats disembarking catches in French ports and to also impose systematic sanitary checks on British exports to the continent via French ports unless London relents on the limited number of post-Brexit licences accorded to French fishing vessels operating in UK waters.
A French government minister has threatened the disruption of energy supplies to the UK, as well as cross-Channel traffic, following London's decision to severely limit licenses accorded to French fishermen, adding that France would urge reprisals at an EU level, including the proposition of limiting access for UK students to the bloc's educational institutions.
French government spokesman Gabriel Attal warned that Paris could seek 'retaliatory measures' through the EU amid renewed tensions over limited post-Brexit fishing rights now granted by the UK to French trawlers.
The French president's office said on Friday that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Emmanuel Macron to express his hopes of resuming cooperation between their two countries on defence and climate change, following a bitter diplomatic dispute over Australia's decision to cancel a 56-billion-euro order for French submarines.
After a phone conversation on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron appeared to have at least partly defused tensions over the new military pact between Australia, the UK and the US which entailed the cancellation of Australia’s purchase of 12 French submarines worth 56 billion euros. In this op-ed article, Mediapart’s international affairs specialist François Bougon argues that the diplomatic crisis of recent days should prompt a re-think of France’s global role and an end to the notion of its grandeur and exceptionalism, a heritage handed down from Charles de Gaulle.
Paris has called off a meeting due in London this week between France's armed forces minister and her British counterpart amid a heightening row over Australia’s decision to abandon a deal to buy 12 French diesel-electric submarines in favour of a pact with the US and UK.
A 23-year-old French woman who has been living in Britain over the past year, and who has applied for residency status as required of EU citizens by post-Brexit regulations, was detained for more than eight hours when she re-entered the country at London's Gatwick airport last month.
