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Sewer Dispute: Conflict between France and Britain over sewage from England
Steve Bray, one of Britain’s most prominent Brexiteers, sits on a toilet outside the Cabinet Office, reading a newspaper during a protest against the discharge of incompletely treated water into rivers and seas.
© Source: Frank Ochstein/AP/dpa
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Liz Truss had a bad name in France before she became British Prime Minister. When French President Emmanuel Macron was asked in a public appearance weeks before the election if he was “friend or foe,” he avoided a clear answer. “The jury’s still out,” Truss said in a humorous tone, meaning something like: It’s still undecided. “If you cannot tell between the French and the British whether we are friends or enemies, we will have serious problems,” replied Macron, clearly irritated.
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There have always been issues between the two countries, which are separated by the English Channel – and sometimes conflict affects the strait between them, whether it’s over fishing rights for fishermen or, more recently, travel chaos at ferry terminals. The latest controversy revolves around France’s accusation that Britain is dumping raw sewage into the sea as a result of heavy rains that overwhelmed Britain’s sewage system.
Dozens of beaches in England and Wales were closed at the end of August, the BBC reported. On the other hand, on the French side, neither regional health authorities nor environmental organizations nor fishermen have detected water pollution.
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Nevertheless, the BBC reports startled three French MEPs from Macron’s ruling party, La République en Marche. In a letter to EU Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius, the trio fear “negative consequences for the quality of the seawater we share with this country, for marine biodiversity, but also for the activities of fishermen and shearwater farmers”.
The Channel and the North Sea are not rubbish.
Three French MEPs
The United Kingdom has opted out of European environmental protection rules, although these will continue to apply regardless of Brexit. Because the country has committed itself to protecting the seas by signing the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and within the framework of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement with the European Union. “The Canal and the North Sea are not a garbage dump,” the three politicians called on the EU Commission to intervene.
In fact, according to environmental regulators, water companies in England and Wales will discharge around 375,000 tonnes of untreated sewage into rivers and seas by 2021. An outdated sewerage system is also one of the reasons for this. In heavy rain, the pre-Victorian network reaches its capacity limits.
If companies want to discharge water, they must actually notify the authorities and seek permission. In fact. According to experts, there are not enough controls. Environmental protection organizations therefore declared the self-regulatory model a failure. Greenpeace’s Doug Barr bluntly told reporters: “After a decade of budget cuts and government deregulation, the environmental agency is really in a bad mess.”
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The new Prime Minister Truss also has to take responsibility for this situation. As environment minister from 2014 to 2016, he cut funding to fight water pollution. Vaughan Lewis, a senior adviser at the Environment Agency, admitted it was “impossible” for the agency to properly monitor the problem.
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Sewage is discharged near Hampshire harbour.
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EU Commissioner Cinquevicius has now responded to the French MEPs’ letter. “We believe the UK must respect all its legal obligations to prevent harm to health and the environment,” he wrote on Twitter. There are currently no concrete results.
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