France warns submarine row puts Brexit talks at risk

Britain’s secret security pact with the US and Australia has put Brexit negotiations over Northern Ireland at risk, France said on Tuesday as it warned the submarine row was now a “European issue”.

Paris is furious after being blindsided by the pact, which included an agreement to build nuclear submarines and meant that Australia pulled out of a £72.8billion deal to buy diesel-powered French vessels.

It accused Joe Biden of “a breach of trust” and said Anglo-French relations had also suffered.

French Europe minister Clément Beaune, who on Monday called for an end to EU trade talks with Canberra, said the bloc was showing “solidarity” with France in its dispute with London, Canberra and Washington.

He said that trust in Britain had already been damaged by Brexit, and warned the EU would need to rebuild confidence before a deal could be struck over the Northern Ireland Protocol.

“We see when we look at the Brexit agreements that are not well implemented, that are not fully respected, we see it with the Aukus project. There were some hidden things,” Mr Beaune said at the start of a meeting of EU Europe ministers in Brussels.

“So it's not the best context to have trust between us,” he added, before the European Commission briefed ministers on the latest in UK-EU relations.

The UK and EU are at loggerheads over the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol, which creates a customs border between the province and Britain.

The EU insists that checks in the Irish Sea are necessary to preserve the invisible border on the island of Ireland and protect its Single Market, but London argues the checks are too burdensome and are having a chilling effect on trade.

The European Commission has repeatedly insisted on the need for trust if the Brexit talks are to be successful after having accused the UK of breaking international law by overriding parts of the protocol.

Both sides recently agreed a standstill period to head off the threat of a fresh outbreak of the “sausage war” over checks on chilled meats and buy time for negotiations over the protocol, which took effect at the end of last year.

Mr Beaune said, “We have different issues that we should not mix up. But basically, we see with Brexit, we see with the Aukus project, that we need first to rebuild confidence [...] We are not in this context at the moment.”

The outspoken minister, a close ally of Emmanuel Macron, said the UK had repeatedly refused to negotiate security and defence cooperation with the EU during last year’s Brexit negotiations.

Instead, Boris Johnson had opted to be a “junior partner” by going “side by side” with the US.

Mr Beaune said the “key responsibility” for the bitter row belonged to Australia for breaking the contracts, and to the US for putting pressure on Canberra to build their submarines, rather than take French ones.

Paris recalled its ambassadors to the US and Australia this week and cancelled a defence summit with the UK.

Mr Beaune said that the “highest EU authorities” have “ been very clear to say - including to our US friends - this is a European issue.”

“Of course it creates a breach of trust and a worry on the French, but also on the European, side,” he added.

France has secured some support from the EU in the dispute. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, told CNN on Monday, “One of our member states has been treated in a way that is not acceptable.

“So we want to know what happened and why. And therefore, we will clarify that before we keep on going with business as usual."

Michael Roth, Germany's Europe minister, said the EU had to "stick together" and that France should "be able to rely on us".

In a sign of Berlin's support for French-driven plans for common EU defence, he said: "I understand the disappointment of our French partners and we are communicating closely with them. It is once again a wakeup call for all of us in the EU to ask ourselves ‘how can we strengthen our sovereignty’?

Charles Michel, president of the European Council and a close Macron ally, said ahead of the United Nations general assembly in New York that the affair had damaged US-EU relations at a point when they were rebuilding after the presidency of Donald Trump.

“At least with Donald Trump it was very, very clear that he was not in favour of the European integration, that for him Europe doesn’t matter, but it was clear,” he told reporters.

“With the new Joe Biden administration, America is back,” he said, “What does it mean America is back? Is America back in America or somewhere else? We don’t know.”