French fishermen take protest to Dover Strait,

[Fred Vloo]

CALAIS, France, May 23, 2008 (AFP) - French fishermen angry over high fuel  costs on Friday disrupted shipping in the Dover Strait and blocked access to a  Total oil refinery despite government pledges to unlock aid.
   Dubbed Operation Snail, about 40 trawlers formed a queue near the  Boulogne-sur-mer port to slow down traffic through the Dover Strait, one of the  busiest seaways used by some 600 vessels a day between the Atlantic and the  North Sea.
   In Dunkirk, fishermen set fire to crates and set up roadblocks to prevent  trucks from entering the Total oil refinery where riot police were deployed to  secure the entrances, said an AFP correspondent.
   Fishermen ransacked fish stands at two wholesalers in Normandy while police  dismantled roadblocks set up five days ago to cut off access to the BP Mobil  depot at Frontignan in the south, a police official said.
   Similar protests took place in Belgium where hundreds of fishermen marched  in the main fishing port of Zeebrugge while crews in Portugal announced a  nationwide strike as of next Friday.
   Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Michel Barnier travelled to the western  city of Rennes to defend his offer of 110 million euros (173 million dollars)  in immediate aid to help cushion the cost of soaring fuel prices.
   "I believe that this plan has nothing in common with what has been done in  the past. It is an urgent response to the need to modernise French fisheries,"  said Barnier.
   The emergency aid announced on Wednesday will come from a 310-million-euro  package unveiled earlier this year after the fishermen blocked several ports in  a similar protest movement in November.
   But the fishermen said they were dissatisfied with the government's offer  and refused to heed the call from their leaders to go back to work.
   Maritime officials in the northern Pas-de-Calais region said Operation  Snail was slowing down commercial shipping and sent three navy vessels, a  helicopter and two tugboats to the zone to beef up monitoring.
   About 40 fishermen occupied the offices of the regional Finistere  administration in the Brittany city of Quimper, while boats sat idle in the  port of Guilvinec.
   The trawler crews from Guilvinec were to meet with truckers and farmers to  discuss joint action against the soaring price they pay for diesel, some 75  euro cents a litre compared with 40 cents in November.
   In Caen, about 100 fishermen ransacked the fish stands of two wholesalers  and staged a protest that disrupted traffic along a motorway in Normandy,  police said.
   Three supermarkets were raided in the southern Bordeaux region late  Thursday and fishermen clashed with truckers loading fish at the Arcachon port,  local officals said.
   President Nicolas Sarkozy's government was also facing questions from the  European Union, which expressed concern that the aid package to the fishermen  may contain a form of disguised subsidy to businesses.
   "This measure is a social measure. It is not assistance to businesses,"  Barnier said in a television interview.
   He expressed confidence that the European Commission would not veto 40  million euros of social grants contained in the package after Brussels said it  would look into whether the aid violated EU rules.
   The fishermen's protest movement began on May 10 in the Atlantic ports near  La Rochelle and quickly spread to northern France and the Mediterranean.
   Protests escalated this week, disrupting cross-Channel traffic, while  fishermen clashed with police outside a government building in Paris where  negotiations were being held.
   Motorists have rushed to stock up at filling stations around La Rochelle  and shortages were reported near Montpellier on the Mediterranean coast.