Britain Has Paid France $635 Million to Counter Channel Boats: Ministry
Britain has paid France 540 million euros ($635 million) since 2023 in fees to combat small boats carrying undocumented migrants across the Channel, a senior French official said Thursday.
France has spent about 331 million euros in the same period on the campaign, according to figures provided by Laurent Touvet, head of the interior ministry’s DGEF agency, which handles migration policy.
“It is estimated that the United Kingdom’s contribution to the fight against illegal immigration is around 62% of the total” with the remaining 38% covered by France, Touvet told a parliamentary commission.
For 2023-2026, “this represents 540 million euros funded by the United Kingdom,” mainly for “personnel costs, but also for investment on French territory”, he added.
It was “plausible” to estimate that about 85% of the total sum had been spent on security missions and the rest on social, health and humanitarian costs, including rescues at sea, said Touvet.
The parliamentary commission is looking into the impact of the 2004 Franco-British accord on cross-Channel migration on the rights of migrants.
Elsa Faucillon, the communist lawmaker who chairs the commission, said there was “the feeling that there’s a lot of vagueness and a lack of transparency regarding the amount of money deployed.
“These are very substantial sums, and yet we have not only 40,000 crossings, but also very well-documented and numerous human rights violations,” she added.
According to British figures, some 41,472 people crossed the Channel in small boats in 2025 — the second highest figure since the phenomenon took off in 2018.
At least 29 would-be migrants died in the Channel in 2025, according to an AFP count from official French and British sources.
