Refugee camp angers posh Parisians
PARIS residents have reacted with fury to camps being built in the city which are set to be filled with thousands of UK-bound migrants.
A £4million camp designed primarily for vulnerable women and children is set to be completed in one of its most upmarket districts.
Two wooden buildings containing 24 housing units have each gone up next to the Bois de Boulogne, the historic wood in Paris’s 16th arrondissement [district].
The buildings are situated near palatial apartments worth £3million each.
This has prompted anger from neighbours who say it will turn the area into a ‘new Sangatte’ – a reference to the refugee centre near Calais which became a magnet for thousands of migrants before it was shut down. A petition entitled ‘No to a Sangatte in the Bois de Boulogne’ has already been signed by 50,000 locals.
The 16th arrondissement is the third richest district in France for average household income, and includes embassies, museums and art galleries.
Millionaires with properties there include Carla Bruni – the wife of former French president Nicolas Sarkozy – as well as Russian oligarchs and Arab oil tycoons.
Claude Goasguen, a 16th arrondissement councillor, blamed the city’s mayor Anne Hidalgo.
He said: ‘For political reasons, Madam Hidalgo wants to turn the Bois de Boulogne into a new Sangatte.’
Mrs Hidalgo said up to 100 migrants a day were arriving in Paris, but most wanted to get to Calais, and then the UK.