doHow many men, women and children will it take to drown while trying to cross the English Channel, crammed into inflatable boats, while the question of the Franco-British border, which separates two countries emblematic of the defence of human rights, is no longer raised exclusively? In terms of surveillance, drones and the fight against smugglers? The new tragedy that affected at least twelve migrants, most of them Eritreans, on Tuesday 3 September, a few nautical miles from Cap Gris-Nez, once again illustrates the deadly impasse in which the two countries have locked themselves on this issue.
It’s been more than twenty years since the Le Touquet agreements were signed in 2003, which made French authorities the guardians of the UK’s rail and sea borders, thus exempting Britons from examining asylum claims at the border, as required by international law. Since the late 2010s, the increasingly strict closure of access to the Channel Tunnel has encouraged migrants to resort to an even more dangerous means than clandestine embarkation in trucks: the sea crossing by small boats overcrowded, supplied by unscrupulous traffickers. If 8,400 sea crossings were recorded in 2020, more than 21,000 have been recorded since the beginning of 2024. At the same time, the number of drownings has only increased dramatically. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than forty people have died on the coast since the beginning of this year alone.
In addition to its unacceptable human cost, such a situation is neither politically nor diplomatically justifiable. France finds itself in a situation of subcontracting London’s immigration policy. French police and gendarmes are absorbed in an absurd task that is contrary to fundamental rights: preventing foreigners from leaving the territory of the European Union. In fact, Paris plays the controversial role that Turkey or Libya accept towards the EU: preventing the crossing of a border in exchange for a payment.
Create legal avenues
In 2023, London signed another financing agreement for French surveillance, material and human resources, which provides for the payment of 543 million euros over three years. With the results we know: each intensification of repression leads immigrants to take more risks, hence the multiplication of tragedies.
It is time for the British and French to sit down at the table to define a common policy for managing these migrations. This involves making it possible for migrants to request asylum in the United Kingdom at the border and defining criteria for the distribution of files between the two countries. Paris’ surveillance of the Channel cannot continue without the creation of legal migration routes.
In Boulogne-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais), on Tuesday, Gérald Darmanin called for the signing of a “Migration Treaty between Great Britain and the European Union”. This proposal, which has already been formulated, would have been more credible if the Home Secretary had defended it before joining a resigning government. While in London, the Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, says he wants to relaunch his relations with France and the EU, it will be up to the future French government to help him emerge, urgently, from the deadly spiral of shipwrecks in the English Channel.
