What Do French Fishermen Want?

A good kicking, might be the short answer from the British yachtsmen blockaded in France's Channel ports since last Friday (it is hard for us to imagine how unpleasant an enforced diet of fruits de mer and rôti de cabillaud from some foul French harbor front eatery must be).

But actually what French fishermen want is fuel that costs 35p a liter like it did six months ago, rather than 55p like it does now. If the price remains that high, they argue, many will be out of business by the end of the year. They are not alone: fishermen in Portugal, Belgium and Holland are also planning protests unless their governments intervene to mitigate the impact of soaring fuel prices. Italy's Federation of Fishing Cooperatives meet today to discuss strike action, and Spain's largest fishermen's association, Cepesca, is expected to call a stoppage from Friday.

France's fishermen are alone, however, in having already obtained from their government a promise to spend €70m over the next six months subsidizing their fuel. Fisheries minister Michel Barnier has also pledged €22m to boat-owners on the brink of bankruptcy, and €15m to those who have already reached their EU-imposed quota. Finally, the French government has undertaken to persuade retailers to pay fishermen fairer prices, and to lobby Brussels for higher limits on the amounts national governments can give their stricken fleets.

So why - besides the fact that they are French (joke) - are they still on strike? Essentially, because they want the seas once more to be full of fish, and fishermen once more to be free to catch as many of them as they like. That, though, is in no one's power to give. And no amount of flare-firing, port-blockading and cod-dumping will do much about it.