France is heading for a showdown with Britain over the Channel migrant crisis unless the UK agrees to open “legal admission channels” for those seeking to reach its shores, its hardline interior minister has warned.
Bruno Retailleau also called for a “comprehensive” Europe-wide deal with Britain on migration, in which the UK accepted legal routes for migrants in exchange for the return of illegal immigrants from Britain to the EU. He pledged to engage in an “arm-wrestle” with the EU on the issue if necessary to obtain it.
During a visit to Calais, in northern France, on Friday, he said that “the relationship between France and the United Kingdom can no longer be reduced to sub-contracting out to France” security on the Channel border.
Last year, the UK pledged £478 million to help the French police its borders over a three-year period. Mr Retailleau announced that some 175 police would be added to the current 800 on the northern coast, but said: “Not everything can be solved with additional funding.”
He added that “there is a showdown to be had” on border security between the two countries in the wake of Brexit.
“I hope it won’t come to that, but we have to change this relationship,” he insisted during his first trip to the Calais coast since taking up his post in Michel Barnier’s Right-wing government.
Mr Retailleau said that “Brexit has destroyed all the migratory relationships we had with the other side of the Channel, including legal admissions channels” from France to England “by air, sea or rail”.
He said he had intended to discuss these issues with Yvette Cooper, his British counterpart, whom he has invited to the northern Pas-de-Calais area on Dec 9 before a meeting the following day in London in a format extended to Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland.
In an interview with La Voix du Nord on Friday, he said: “We need a new relationship with the British. Brexit has changed the situation. Only a comprehensive deal between the UK and the EU can really turn things around.
“If I have to engage in an arm-wrestle, I will.”
France’s new government has vowed to curb migrant numbers, and sources said recently that it “absolutely” believes the lack of an EU-wide migration deal with the UK after Brexit is a pull factor for illegal immigrants travelling to French soil from countries such as Italy and Greece.
“The border between France and the United Kingdom is Europe’s common external border. Why should France alone, since the UK is no longer an EU member state, bear the entire burden of defending this external border? That is no longer possible,” said Mr Retailleau.
He added: “If things do not progress, we will denounce the Le Touquet agreement,” referring to the 2004 deal under which Britain is authorised to conduct border checks on French soil.
However, he appeared to rule out scrapping the Le Touquet deal, warning that doing so “would be the best way to rebuild the jungle and to clog up cross-Channel traffic”.
“Eventually, there will have to be a legal [immigration] route to Great Britain and a returns route not only to France but also to the border countries,” he said.
The current framework had “totally run out of steam”, Mr Retailleau added, pointing out that, according to the French authorities, 72 migrants have died this year trying to reach England in makeshift boats. ‘It’s not tolerable – it’s a tragedy,” he said.
Brussels rejected British calls for a UK-EU migration deal, which would allow the return of Channel migrants to France, during the Brexit negotiations from 2017 to 2021.
It told the UK it would have to negotiate bilateral migrant return deals with individual EU countries such as France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands instead.
The European Commission has rebuffed calls for such a deal ever since, but is under pressure following recent letters from France and Germany, the EU’s two most influential members, on the issue.
