Macron claims victory in battle over border checks at Calais

By Henry Samuel in Paris, Gordon Rayner

and Justin Huggler EMMANUEL MACRON is claiming victory in a battle to make Britain pay more for border checks at France’s Channel ports and take in more child migrants ahead of a summit with Theresa May this week. The French president had threatened to tear up the Le Touquet treaty, which allows British border guards to operate in Calais and other ports, after saying France could no longer be Britain’s “coastguard”.

He was unhappy at Britain’s refusal to take in more migrants who continue to arrive at Calais despite the infamous “Jungle” camp being dismantled in 2016, but the Elysée now says it has won significant concessions from Britain in the form of a joint “operational task force” to handle asylum requests.

Whitehall sources said the Government was prepared to “listen to the case” for extra payments to France for border security but felt it was already doing enough to take in child migrants.

Any agreement to pay more for border checks in France is likely to meet with stiff opposition from Brexit-supporting Conservatives.

Mr Macron and Mrs May will meet on Thursday at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, Berks, where security and defence co-operation will be on the agenda.

However, Mr Macron, who will visit Calais on a fact-finding trip today, is said to have insisted that border controls are also on the table.

A source at the Elysée said Mr Macron would demand more money to “improve border controls but also [for Britain] to take responsibility on the French side for the consequences of managing migrants” after Brexit.

British taxpayers have already paid €140 million (£125 million) towards border security at Calais in the past three years and last month Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, said the country should not pay “a penny more” for French border security after Brexit.

Under the 2003 Le Touquet accord, British border controls are conducted on French soil, meaning migrants attempting to get to

Britain illegally are stopped before they leave Calais. A Downing Street spokesman pointed out that the treaty was a bilateral deal between Britain and France and had nothing to do with EU membership. A Government source said: “The Le Touquet agreement has served both Britain and France well and continues to do so. If you removed it you would create a magnet for more people to come to Calais.”

Hundreds of migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and elsewhere are still sleeping rough in Calais in the hope of reaching the UK. The numbers have shrunk from 8,000 to “between 350 and 500” today, but there were still 115,000 “attempted intrusions” by migrants in trucks, trains or boats in Calais last year, said the Elysée.

“In principle, the British have accepted an additional protocol, a clause or a new treaty. It will be a tool that will be legally binding and have the force of a treaty. It won’t be a simple declaration.”

According to the French newspaper Le Monde, the French president will demand that Britain take more migrants in return for French approval for a post-brexit trade agreement. The Elysée confirmed that Mr Macron wants Mrs May to “speed up the transfer of (adult) migrants to Britain with legitimate reasons to go there such as family ties” and to “accept more unaccompanied minors and faster”.

At the “heart” of the discussions was a “Franco-british operational task force”, said the source, in which Home Office and French interior ministry agents would jointly handle asylum requests in France.

It also emerged yesterday that Germany is trying to block proposed changes to the EU’S asylum system which could force it to take in hundreds of thousands more migrants.

Diplomatic sources confirmed Germany is lobbying other member states to reject the changes, which have been approved by the European Parliament. Under the proposals, migrants would have the right to seek asylum in any EU country where members of their family had been allowed to stay.

The changes are part of a bid to reform the EU’S “Dublin rules”, under which migrants can only seek asylum in the first EU country they enter.