The agreement comes the day after the announcement by the British Ministry of Defense of a record number of migrants who have gone through the Channel since the beginning of the year, more than 40,000.
Le Monde with AFP
France and the United Kingdom signed a new agreement on Monday to fight together against crossing migrants in the English Channel, a source of regular tensions for several years between Paris and London, said the French Ministry of the Interior .
This agreement provides in particular that the British pay 72.2 million euros in 2022-2023 to France, which, in return, will increase its security forces by 40 % (350 police and additional gendarmes, including reservists) On its beaches, where migrants leave for the United Kingdom, according to the joint declaration of the two countries.
No encrypted objective of boats interceptions, as the United Kingdom wished, according to the across the Channel, appears in the document, signed Monday morning in Paris by the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and his British counterpart, Suella Braverman.
The agreement comes the day after the announcement by the British Ministry of Defense of a record number of migrants who have gone through the Channel since the beginning of the year, more than 40,000.
“Propose safe alternatives”
In this text, London and Paris first set themselves the objective of deploying “technological and human resources”, including drones, on the French coast to better detect, monitor and intercept boats.
The two countries also want to collect and use information, in particular “coming from intercepted migrants”, to better dismantle the networks of smugglers and dissuade crossings through joint work “as upstream as possible”, in connection with the countries of origin and transit of exiles. To achieve these three objectives, a dozen actions aimed at “a more integrated and more effective approach” are listed.
For the first time, teams of observers will be deployed on both sides of the English Channel in order to “strengthen common understanding” between the two countries, “improve the course of migrant debriefings” and “increase the information exchanges “.
The agreement also provides for the financing of “detection dogs” in ports and the installation of surveillance cameras at the main border crossing points along the coast. Reception centers for migrants must also be created in the south of France to dissuade exiles who borrow the Mediterranean from going back to Calais and “propose safe alternatives”.
The agreement is signed almost a year after the death of 27 migrants, on November 24, 2021, during the sinking of their boat off Calais, the worst drama recorded in the English Channel. More than 200 people died or have been missing, at sea or on earth, trying to join England from the northern coast of France since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration (OIM).