When British Prime Minister Boris Johnson welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron at the climate protection conference in Glasgow on Monday, there was nothing to notice: a casual touch on the arm, as if two old friends were seeing each other again.

At that moment, two heads of government met who had just given the other an ultimatum.

Macron had asked Johnson the previous evening to correct the licensing policy for French fishermen within 24 hours, otherwise Paris would put sanctions into force, including presumably a berthing ban for British fishermen, additional controls of trucks at the channel border and an increase in electricity prices for the British Channel Islands .

Jochen Buchsteiner

Political correspondent in London.

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The British government then gave the French a 48-hour deadline on Monday morning to withdraw their threats. Otherwise, London will take legal action and set in motion the dispute mechanism agreed in the British-European trade agreement. The joint efforts to take measures against global warming failed to cool the mood in the regional trade dispute. The British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss spoke on Monday of "completely inappropriate threats" from Paris and called on the French to "give in".

French MP for Calais, Pierre-Henri Dumont, announced on the BBC that the government in Paris would “negotiate even harder” “to let the British understand that fishing rights are very important to us and part of the deal was".

He threatened to stop accepting British scallops, not to allow cutters from the United Kingdom to dock on the French coast and also to include the power supply for the British Channel Islands in the “retaliatory measures”.

"That's on the table," he said.

Johnson “amazed” about a letter to von der Leyen

Johnson had asked the European Union at the weekend to call France to order because its actions affect the Union as a whole. Johnson referred in particular to a letter that French Prime Minister Jean Castex had sent to the President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. In it, Castex had demanded that the British fulfill their contractual obligations and concluded the letter by saying that the European public had to be “shown” that leaving the European Union would do more harm than just being a member. This passage, said Johnson at a press conference on the G-20 summit in Rome, had "amazed" him. "I have to tell everyone, I don't thinkthat this is in line with the Withdrawal Agreement and the UK-European trade agreement - neither in spirit nor in letter. "

The EU has been keeping a low profile so far, but Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič is holding talks with Brexit Minister David Frost this week.

In an article for the Daily Telegraph, Šefčovič made no mention of the fishing license dispute, but expressed his "growing concern" that Britain was not negotiating the Northern Ireland Protocol in a constructive manner and was "heading onto a course of confrontation".

In addition to fishing licenses, the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol is the other major area of ​​conflict that the Brexit agreements have left behind.

In his article, Šefčovič once again promoted the recently submitted EU proposals for practical improvements in the trade situation in Northern Ireland, describing them as a “package of improved opportunities”.

So far, London has taken the view that the proposals did not go far enough.

The fragile situation in Northern Ireland came back into focus on Monday when two masked and armed men hijacked a bus in Newtownards and set it on fire;

nobody got hurt.

According to local media reports, the two men were referring to the Northern Ireland Protocol in their act.

Belfast's ruling Democratic Unionist Party had demanded that substantial changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol be agreed by Monday.