December 28, 2020 — With just days to go until Great Britain officially leaves the European Union’s single common market and customs union, the two sides appear close to a trade deal.
But there has been particular apprehension along a stretch of French coastline that is home to the massive cross-channel rail and ferry port of Calais, and Europe’s largest seafood processing platform. A dispute over fishing rights — a small but highly symbolic sector — has been one of the main sticking points to a trade deal between the EU and the United Kingdom.
Every morning at the English Channel port of Boulogne-sur-Mer, French trawlers pull up to the docks to unload their catch after fishing all night.
Laurent Merlin, a French fisherman, says he gets well over half his catch in British waters, where he says there are more fish. If there’s no deal and the French are banned from fishing in British waters, Merlin says he won’t survive.