exclusive investigation by the UK Fisheries Campaign<\/a> (UKFC) in association with Facts4EU and GB News has revealed how Truss was closer to the truth than her critics suggested – and its results could spell trouble for the May 19 summit.<\/p>\nOn the evening of Tuesday October 27, 2021 – around 11 months before Truss came to power – the French Government issued a threatening ultimatum to its British counterpart – in French, on social media, and far from the prying eyes of the UK’s Brexit negotiation team.<\/p>\n
Emmanuel Macron’s “attack puppy” Clement Beaune – who has labelled Brexit an “intellectual fraud” in the past – unleashed a two-page “press communique”, packed with specific threats of French hostile action to begin on November 2 that year.<\/p>\n
If Britain failed to cave to French demands over a handful of fishing licences, France would violate international law and hold the UK to ransom until it did.<\/p>\n
LATEST MEMBERSHIP STORIES ON BREXIT:<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"France's](\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%201600%20900'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\")
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IN FULL – IN FRENCH – France’s ‘communique’ to Britain<\/p>\n
X\/UKFC<\/p>\n
![\"\\u200bClement](\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%205318%203575'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\")
<\/p>\n
Clement Beaune has labelled Brexit an ‘intellectual fraud’ in the past<\/p>\n
REUTERS<\/p>\n
The French ultimatum listed four primary threats to Britain – which, if followed through, would reignite hostilities between the two countries dormant since Napoleon was vanquished at Waterloo.<\/p>\n
\n- Blocking all British fishing vessels from landing fish in French ports;<\/li>\n
- Imposing strict controls at the border;<\/li>\n
- Systematic surveillance and checking of all British boats in French waters;<\/li>\n
- Imposing strict border controls on all lorries coming from or departing to the UK.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
And a triple-pronged set of secondary actions could have seen Macron and Beaune create a foreign war to deflect attention from problems at home:<\/p>\n
\n- Cutting off power supplies to the UK and Channel Islands as part of a second set of measures;<\/li>\n
- The stopping of cooperation on all other subjects concerning relations between the UK and the EU;<\/li>\n
- An urgent meeting of all EU countries about France’s fishing dispute, “without delay”.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
As the UK Fisheries Campaign says, “what better target than Perfidious Albion, the old enemy? Attacking ‘Les Rosbifs’ is always going to play well with many parts of the French public”.<\/p>\n
![\"British](\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%205109%203406'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\")
<\/p>\n
At the next EU summit, France’s Government tried to persuade its continental allies to adopt a bloc-wide stance condemning the UK over fishing rights <\/p>\n
PA<\/p>\n
The French threats never came to pass.<\/p>\n
Lord Frost, Britain’s Brexit negotiation chief, said after the communique: “It is very disappointing that France has felt it necessary to make threats late this evening against the UK fishing industry and seemingly traders more broadly.”<\/p>\n
At the next EU summit, France’s Government tried to persuade its continental allies to adopt a bloc-wide stance condemning the UK over fishing rights – and taking action against the UK.<\/p>\n
And with another major meeting around the corner, UKFC is raising fears that Macron and his negotiators could pour fuel on the embers of a so-called “guerre franco-brittanique” – and lead Starmer and Labour into committing to a “Brexit betrayal”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just nine days remain until May 19 – the date of Sir Keir Starmer’s major EU “relations reset”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,8274,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-89613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-membership","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Starmer](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/starmer-and-macron.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"France's](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/france-s-communique-to-britain.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\\u200bClement](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/u200bclement-beaune.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"British](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/british-fishing-boat.jpg\")
<\/p>\n