Macron set to pressure Britain

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron is set to pressure Britain to contribute more to dealing with migrants trying to cross the Channel from Calais on Tuesday as he visits the northern port which has long been a magnet for asylum seekers.

The 40-year-old centrist is expected to lay out his demands for Britain, outlined by ministers in previous days, as well as defend his government’s own controversial proposals to stem the

At stake is a 2003 agreement between Britain and France which effectively moved the UK border onto French territory, meaning the area around Calais has become a bottleneck where migrants heading for Britain wait.

Interior Minister Gerard Collomb reiterated Tuesday that France would ask Britain to take in more refugees from northern France and increase their funding—not only for security measures, but also for the development of Calais.

“It’s in their interests that things go well,” Collomb told the France 2 television channel on Tuesday ahead of a meeting between Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday in London.

Referring to the importance of Calais for the British economy, which faces uncertainty ahead of the country’s exit from the European Union, Collomb added that “a quarter of their trade transits through Calais.”

The police in the port city routinely break up makeshift camps of migrants who descend on the region to try and stow away on trucks crossing the Channel to Britain, a favourite destination for Afghans and east Africans.

Hundreds of migrants are still massed in the area, over a year after the former Socialist government demolished the Jungle, a squalid makeshift camp in Calais, and moved its more than 7,000 occupants to shelters nationwide.

As a candidate ahead of this election in May, Macron had consistently said that he intended to renegotiate the 2003 border agreement with Britain, known as the Le Touquet accord.