New threat to block ports on channel

Traders and lorry drivers will attempt to paralyse traffic around the Channel ports next week in a protest against the failure of the French state to close the ‘‘jungle’’ migrant camp at Calais, demonstrators said yesterday.

The shop-keepers and local business owners are to use lorries to block the coastal A16 motorway that runs from the Belgian border past Boulogne and Calais. At the same time protesters will form a human chain from the Calais municipal stadium to the shipping port.

‘‘We are changing our tactics after using soft methods and obtaining nothing but promises from the state that is giving priority to the wellbeing of the migrants over those of traders, port workers, hauliers, tourists and farmers,’’ the association of Calais traders said.

‘‘We will not budge from the motorway until the state gives us the dates for the total demolition of the northern zone of the jungle,’’ the association said.

Calais residents and business people have staged several marches over the past year to voice their despair over what they see as the invasion of their town by migrants who have gathered there, mainly in the camp by the port.

Police reported yesterday ( that its population, living mainly in sordid conditions, was about to reach a record 10,000 despite the government’s bulldozing of half of its area earlier this year.

Migrants have been blocking the motorway in nightly incursions and several have died in accidents and fights in recent weeks.

Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais, has repeatedly blamed the Socialist government – as well as Britain – for the crisis afflicting her town.

‘‘Either this government is failing to grasp the gravity of the situation or it no longer knows what to do and its inaction is an admission of impotence,’’ she said.

Alliance, the French police union, said its officers were no longer able to cope with increasing disorder in the migrant camp. ‘‘The French police are not the gate guards of the English,’’ said Jean-Claude Delage, head of the Alliance.

‘‘Our force is just receiving blows. This has to stop,’’ he told Le Figaro.

Police estimate that a total of 12,000 migrants bound for Britain are now living rough or in emergency accommodation in the French Channel area.

A fall in the number of migrants being expelled from Calais led to claims that President Hollande’s policies were exacerbating the crisis. The government admitted that only 1,145 migrants had been sent back to their countries of origin between January and August 19, an average of 135 a month. The figure for 2015 was 146 a month.

The disclosure infuriated opposition politicians, who said that the number of migrants in and around Calais had risen sharply this year.

That should have led to an increase in the expulsions, critics said, arguing that the unexpected fall illustrated Hollande’s failure to get a grip on the crisis. The president’s detractors said his dithering had left police powerless in the face of an upsurge in people arriving in France from the Horn of Africa in the hope of journeying on to the UK. They said that migrants who were being detained every night in Calais were usually released to make fresh attempts to cross the Channel.

Xavier Bertrand, chairman of the Hauts-de-France regional council, said: ‘‘This government has delayed too much.’’ The increase in the camp population followed a change of tack by Hollande’s government to appeal to left-wing voters who had been upset by the evacuation of the south side of the camp.

The government’s priority is no longer the expulsion of migrants without authorisation to be in France. It is the creation of welcome centres to house 5,000 migrants while they consider whether to make an asylum claim.

Police say the policy is doomed to fail and have called for a tougher stance.

A spokesman for the interior ministry said the fall in expulsions could be explained by a rise in the number of migrants from countries such as Eritrea and South Sudan, whose citizens have the right to refugee status in France.