Calais requires more, not less co-operation
TODAY’S meeting in Paris between Home Secretary Amber Rudd and her French counterpart Bernard Cazeneuve has been preceded by demands from some politicians across the Channel for the creation of an asylum “hotspot” in Calais, where migrants could apply for refugee status in the UK, and an end to the system under which British border guards carry out passport checks in France. The French advocates see the reforms as a way of ending the unsatisfactory situation that has led to nearly 10,000 migrants living in the squalid and violent Calais “Jungle”, and shifting the problem to Britain.
This search for solutions is understandable, not least in the context of next year’s French presidential election in which security and immigration will be key issues. But the proposed answers — fortunately not shared so far by the French government — are mistaken. Making Calais a place in which to claim asylum to Britain would simply encourage more to make the dangerous journey into France across Europe from the Middle East or North Africa. Ending juxtaposed passport checks — which have benefited millions of travellers since their introduction in 2003 — would not help either and simply inflict pointless economic damage on both France and Britain by slowing journeys through the Channel Tunnel.
A better response would be to bolster existing efforts to tackle the criminal gangs trafficking migrants to Calais. Britain’s approach to Syrian refugees, who are being allowed to claim asylum in camps bordering their own country, should also be adopted more widely, making perilous journeys across land and sea unnecessary. Nor should Brexit alter the approach on either side of the Channel. The existing system was agreed bilaterally, not using the EU, and has been an example of successful co-operation between two sovereign nations. In or out of the EU, joint working between Britain and our European friends remains the way forward in order to find a humane means of dealing with these desperate people.