Turns out, Emmanuel Macron wasn’t just playing hardball in the post-Brexit years—he nearly pulled the plug on Britain, literally. Back in 2021, during a tense few days of UK-EU fishing negotiations, Macron’s government reportedly threatened to cut off the electricity flowing to the UK and the Channel Islands through undersea cables. All because they weren’t getting their way over fishing rights.
At the heart of it? A clash over licences for EU boats, especially French ones, to fish in British waters. Macron and his team accused the UK of dragging its feet on issuing licences, claiming it was all a deliberate stall. But the truth was a lot less dramatic. Of nearly 1,700 EU fishing licences handed out between January and September 2021, only a small number had been held up—and only because those French boats couldn’t prove they’d been fishing in UK waters before Brexit, even after being given extra time to provide evidence, reported GB News.
