French minister says EU, UK need ‘migration treaty’ after Channel deaths
France’s interior minister called for a treaty on migration between the EU and Britain Tuesday after 12 migrants died trying to cross the Channel in the worst such incident this year.
The numbers of migrants crossing the Channel in small boats from France to England have been a major bone of contention in post-Brexit relations between Paris and London.
Britain has on occasion accused Paris of not doing enough to halt the migrants while French officials including Darmanin have sometimes angrily lashed out at London.
Former British prime minister Rishi Sunak, under pressure to reduce the numbers crossing, forged a new deal with President Emmanuel Macron in March of last year increasing British payments to fund more French police along the coast.
Under the deal, London agreed to step up funding to France to total 541 million euros ($575 million), allowing the deployment of “hundreds” of extra French law enforcement officers along the Channel coast.
But Darmanin said Tuesday that “the tens of millions of euros that we negotiate every year with our British friends” were not sufficient to stem the flow of migrants, many of whom he said wanted to reach Britain to reunite with families or “to work in conditions that would not be acceptable in France”.
