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MIGRANT CRISIS

Migrant Channel crossings: What will France spend the €72.2 million euros on?

Britain has agreed to pay France another €72.2million to prevent migrant boat crossings under a new deal intended to improve cooperation between the two countries. But what the money actually be spent on?

Published: 14 November 2022 16:16 CET
Migrant Channel crossings: What will France spend the €72.2 million euros on?
Migrants move a smuggling boat into the water at Gravelines, near Dunkirk, northern France. (Photo by Sameer Al-DOUMY / AFP)

The arrangement will lead to a 40 percent increase in the number of patrols to detect boats before they set out to sea, with UK officers joining their French counterparts for the first time.

That means an additional 100 officers will be involved in operations.

For the first time, teams of observers will be deployed on both sides of the Channel to “strengthen common understanding”.

The latest agreement comes just over a year after a previous deal saw France increase the number of police officers, gendarmes and customs agents dedicated to patrol its northern coastline to 650, in return for €63million in UK funding. 

There is not much in the way of in-depth detail available at the moment, but the new deal reportedly includes an agreement for extra investment in port infrastructure in France, better use of technology, including drones, and “greater cross-Europe cooperation”, as well as better coordinated information-sharing and efforts to offer migrants help and assistance before they make the dangerous crossing.

And part of the funding will be available for reception and removal centres in France for migrants prevented from travelling to the UK, to further deter crossing attempts, a UK government statement said.

Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman said, after signing the agreement with French opposite number Gérald Darmanin: “We must do everything we can to stop people making these dangerous journeys and crack down on the criminal gangs. 

“This is a global challenge requiring global solutions, and it is in the interests of both the UK and French governments to work together to solve this complex problem.”

READ ALSO What is France doing to prevent ‘illegal’ Channel crossings to UK?

Adopting a more cooperative tone to the rhetoric she has employed in the House of Commons, Braverman added: “There are no quick fixes, but this new arrangement will mean we can significantly increase the number of French gendarmes patrolling the beaches in northern France and ensure UK and French officers are working hand in hand to stop the people smugglers.”

Joint British and French collaboration has already prevented over 30,000 illegal crossing attempts since the beginning of 2022, according to official figures – a year-on-year increase of more than 50 percent compared to the number of attempts thwarted in 2021.

Despite these efforts, about 40,000 people – mostly Albanians, Iranians and Afghans – have crossed the Channel to England from France this year. That figure is well over last year’s 28,561, which was a thousand-fold increase from 2018 when migrants and asylum seekers first began sailing inflatables across one of the world’s busiest shipping channels.

The French government has previously said that the British government’s decision to close legal routes for people to apply for asylum from outside the UK is at least part of the problem, leaving them with little choice but to risk their lives in the Channel. 

They also claim that the lack of ID cards in the UK acts as a draw to people who believe it is easier to work illegally. The UK government rejects both these points.

On the Channel coast, doubts remain about whether incremental changes in the number of French officers patrolling the rugged dunes and wide beaches can reverse the rising tide of crossings.

Observers say the migrants’ boats are getting bigger, the tactics of smugglers more sophisticated, and departures are being recorded along a widening stretch of coastline.

Some 972 people were detected making the crossing on Saturday and 853 on Sunday during calm, sunny weather, according to UK figures.

The French coastguard is adamant that it cannot intercept boats once they are in the water because attempting to do so could cause them to capsize.

“I’ve watched so many British ministers over the years coming new to the problem and deciding that they are going to get a grip and somehow solve it,” former British ambassador to France, Peter Ricketts, told AFP.

“But they all end up falling back on the realisation that the only way to bring this under control is by working with the French,” he said.

“To their credit, the Sunak government has reached that conclusion quickly and today’s agreement is good news,” he added.

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JOHN LICHFIELD

OPINION: After the elections, the battle for the soul of France begins

Stripped of the noise and confusion of the campaign, Sunday's second round of voting will in many places be a straight choice between a candidate of the Far Right and a candidate of the anti-Far Right 'republican front' - writes John Lichfield. It will show whether French voters do truly want a Le Pen government - and will kick-start a long and chaotic battle over the future of France.

Published: 5 July 2024 11:50 CEST
OPINION: After the elections, the battle for the soul of France begins

President Emmanuel Macron has finally got his way.

For months he has been attempting to engineer a referendum on the Far Right. French voters insisted on making the European elections and the first round of parliamentary elections a referendum on him.

In Round Two on Sunday, Macron’s question can no longer  be avoided. In more than 300 of the 501 constituencies still in play, there will be a straight fight between the Rassemblement National and a candidate of the so-called “Republican Front”, the makeshift anti-Far Right alliance between former sworn enemies of Left and Centre.

Listen to John and the team from The Local discussing the election latest on the Talking France podcast – download here or listen on the link below

Over 200 of these constituencies were potential three-way battles after Round One. Scores of third-placed candidates of the Left alliance and the Macron centrist alliance have now withdrawn, willingly or under duress, to allow their better-placed former rivals a clear run against the populist-nationalist Right.

Stripped of all the noise and confusion of the campaign, Sunday’s vote is therefore a simple affair. Does France want to be governed by the anti-European, pro-Russian, still fundamentally racist Rassemblement National? 

Ask the experts: How far right is Rassemblement National?

Does it want to be led by a 28-year-old Prime Minister, Jordan Bardella, who is an impressive purveyor of sound-bites and a darling of Tik-Tok but has never run anything but his mouth?

An avalanche of polls and seat projections in the last two days suggests that the answer will be “no”.

All polls still say that the Far Right and their centre-right quisling allies will form the largest single bloc in the new National Assembly on Sunday. All now agree  that Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella will fall far short of the 289 seats needed for an overall majority and well shy of the 260 or so seats which might, with difficulty, form the basis of a governing coalition.

On Monday, when I forecast that the RN would NOT form the next French government, I defied the ambient mood of much of the national and the foreign media. The conventional wisdom has shifted in my direction.

That makes me uneasy. Hundreds of candidates have stood aside. The pollsters have polled. But the voters have yet to vote.

Many of the key battleground constituencies will be very close on Sunday night. Polls suggest that as many as half the first round voters of the Left and Centre are unwilling to vote tactically for their former enemies of Centre and Left.

The transfer of less than half of the third-placed votes should  be enough to defeat the Far Right in many constituencies. It will be insufficient or produce a coin’s toss result in others.

One of the most pivotal Republican Front v Far Right constituencies is my own in south western Calvados. In Round One, the sitting Macronist deputy, the former Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, was pushed into second place by a relatively unknown candidate of the Rassemblement National, Nicolas Calbrix.

The young man who came third, Noé Gauchard, candidate for the hard-left La France Insoumise, withdrew immediately without waiting for national pacts or fronts or instructions.

“It’s hard from me to withdraw for Elisabeth Borne, the woman who manipulated through the pension reform,” he said.

“But that does not compare with fascism.”

In Round One, the RN candidate took 36.26 percent of the vote, Borne 28.93 percent and Guichard 23.16 percent. Most of the rest went to other Far Right candidates (3 percent) and a centre-right candidate (7 percent) Borne therefore needs around 40 percent of the Left vote to win in Round Two.

She should win. It will be very close.

I spoke to one of the few people who live in the constituency who is not white.

I will call him Ahmed. “If I was not a Muslim I would probably vote for Bardella,” he said. “People are very angry. There are some I know who can only afford to eat one meal a day. The Far Right message – no one cares about you but us – may be false but it strikes home.

“I voted for the Left in Round One and I will vote for Borne, with no pleasure, in Round Two but only because I am  a French-born Muslim and I know what damage Le Pen and Bardella can do to my country. Many other people here don’t care about all that.”

The Rassemblement National mocks the Republican Front as the last-stand of the “elite” – an alliance “against nature” which stretches from the anti-capitalist, Mélenchon Left to the Globalist Macronist Centre. Some voters of the Left, and not just the Left, secretly agree with them.

Others, like Noé Guichard and Ahmed, will see Sunday’s vote as a moral stand against a destructive, mendacious and incompetent Far Right.

Marine Le Pen also argues that the Republican Front is a denial of democracy. Her party topped the poll last Sunday with an unprecedented 33.3 percent of the vote. She and Bardella therefore have right to govern, she says.

But France is not Britain. In a first-past-the post, one round system, we would be facing the first far right government in France since 1944. Keir Starmer won a landslide for Labour on Thursday night with only slightly more of the popular vote (about 35 percent) than the RN won last weekend.

The French two-round system may be laborious and arcane but it does give voters a chance to correct blunders and avoid calamities. The political establishment may have “conspired” to create the Republican Front but no one can force voters to support it on Sunday night.

Despite my misgivings, I believe they will. That will not be a “denial” of democracy. It will be the healthy reaction of the two-thirds or so of the French electorate which does NOT want government by mendacious, incompetent and frequently racist charlatans.

France will plunge instead into at least 12 months and possibly three years of confusion and disarray before the next Presidential election. Whatever government can be concocted from Sunday’s results will struggle to respond to the genuine distress of part of the electorate.

In 12 months or three years’ time, Le Pen and Bardella will blame once again a conspiracy of the establishment – not their rejection by a majority of voters – for their failure to bring their destructive and incoherent ideas into government.

I believe that they will be defeated on Sunday but that will be just the beginning of a long and crippling battle over the future, and the soul, of France.  

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