The Minister of the Interior also called on London to negotiate with France a treaty “which binds us on migratory issues”.
Le Monde with AFP
The Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin called on Saturday, October 9, the British Government to “hold his promise” of financial support to the fight against migratory traffic on the French coast. “The [British] government did not pay for the moment what it promised us,” said Darmanin when moving to Loon-Plage (North). “We call the English to keep their funding promise since we hold the border for them,” he continued.
The crossings of migrants that attempt every day to cross the Channel to rally England are regularly at the origin of tensions between London and Paris; Tensions that have recently crystallized on the financial issue. The United Kingdom is committed to the end of July to pay for France 62.7 million euros in 2021-2022 to finance the strengthening of the French forces on the coast. According to the British press, the British Minister Prii Patel, however, threatened, in early September, not to pay this amount due to the records of migrants illegally crossing the handle.
“The 63 million mentioned by the British government, for the moment we have not seen the financial color. However, gendarmes have been hired in addition, technological means have been purchased to keep this border”, explained Darmanin.
Call to negotiate a treatise on migration issues
He claimed that France was “an ally of Great Britain” but “not his vassal”. “We are here to hold a border, it’s true. But we are to do it in complementarity with our British friends,” he added. According to him, the arrests of clandestine boats rose 15 points in the last three months, passing “from 50% to 65% of the boats arrested”. “We must be able to almost reach 100% if we put all these ways and if our British friends continue to help us as they do,” he said.
“We have to negotiate a treaty – since M. (Michel) Barnier did not do it when he negotiated Brexit – who binds us on migratory issues,” added Gérald Darmanin. “I said to the British government and is waiting for his response to hire these discussions,” he said, promising that France would bring this project when she would exercise the semi-annual Presidency of the European Union in January. “We have a tunnel together, we have a common sea and then we have been friends for a very long time,” plead the minister.
m. Darmanin also claimed to have received the insurance of the Director of the European Frontex Border Monitoring Agency that the Frontex Border Agency would be “at the rendezvous” by “the end of the year” to help monitor the area, including via aerial monitoring.