GEOPOLITICS

Calais has more of a federal nature than many French towns. It is one of only five French cities to be allowed by an old royal decree to have its own flag – a white-and-blue cross that resembles the Scottish Saltire. (The other four cities are Dunkirk, Boulogne, Le Havre and Saint Malo.)

It is not widely known that the mayor of Calais (at present, the outspoken and rather well-known in the UK from her numerous media interviews on how to control the flow of migrants, Mme Natacha Bouchart) is simultaneously the president, or in the case of Ms Bouchart, ‘la presidente’, of the so-called Grand Calais Terre et Mere, or Le Communaute d’agglomeration du Calaisis – a government structure created in December 2000 inside the Pas-de-Calais department and consisting of ten smaller communes. ‘The mayors of the Grand Calais agglomeration develop a collective programme to be put in action after the municipal elections,’ ran a headline (translated) in the local La Voix du Nord newspaper on 6 February 2020. One of the mayor’s most recent moves was to make all public transport in the city free of charge.

To enhance this impression of ‘mini-statehood’, Calais has its own ports of entry – the Eurotunnel and the sea port, France’s largest for passenger traffic, now undergoing a major extension. And last but not least – as is customary for any city state – the people of Calais have their own dialect, in which ‘so vo?’ stands for ‘how are you?’ and the popular polisemantic exclamations ‘fiu’ and ‘min’ can mean almost anything depending on the situation. The closest English equivalent to either would probably be ‘wow!’