Emmanuel Macron Is Fishing for a Brexit Advantage
Maritime issues have become the focus for Paris’s no-deal preparations, as the concerns of the gilets jaunes take precedence over the wealthy.
Brexiters thought Paris was only interested in stealing London's banking jobs. But now it's all about the fish.
Photographer: Stephane Mahe/AFP/Getty Images
The reaction from Paris to Theresa May’s crushing defeat on her Brexit vote on Tuesday has been telling. Where people in the U.K. have assumed until now that President Emmanuel Macron was more concerned about grabbing finance jobs from the City of London, his focus appears to have shifted since the emergence of the gilets jaunes protesters. This week, France’s preparations for a disorderly British departure from the EU were all about fishing, not banking.
A jacketless and confident Macron, speaking to a town hall meeting with French mayors, promised to defend the rights of French fishing fleets if May tried a second tilt at finding a deal with Brussels, or failed to find agreement. He was backed up by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who promised to support the French fishing industry as part of a 50 million-euro ($57 million) spending package designed to limit the damage of the U.K. crashing out of the EU without a deal.