France to curb migrant flows from Belgium

Police will be sent to border to cut off key trafficking route across Europe to the Channel

FRANCE plans to deploy more police at the border with Belgium to stem the flow of migrants and asylum seekers, with the interior minister saying half of those crossing the Channel to the UK come that way.

Gérald Darmanin said that security would be boosted because of growing concerns the route was being abused by cross-channel people traffickers.

Eleven boats with 364 migrants onboard crossed the Channel to reach Kent on Sunday, the Home Office said. The French authorities also stopped 16 vessels, preventing more than 500 further arrivals. Forty boats carrying 1,115 people made the crossing on Friday and Saturday. More than 4,500 people on 160 boats made the journey last month.

In all, more than 17,000 migrants are thought to have arrived in the UK after making the dangerous trip across the Channel in small boats launched from northern France. Mr Darmanin suggested that half could have been stopped at the Belgian border.

“Fifty per cent of migrants who want to cross from Calais and Dunkirk come from Belgium,” Mr Darmanin said during an official visit to the two French cities over the weekend.

“I have asked the prefect to deploy control personnel along the entire Belgian border, to arrest smugglers and migrants who want to leave Belgium to arrive in the north of France, in order to drain the well.”

In recent years, Belgium has emerged as one of the key routes used by people smugglers looking to transport migrants illegally into Britain.

Many migrants make the crossing from busy commercial ports such as Zeebrugge and Ostend, hidden in lorries, arranged for them by traffickers.

Others decide to make their own way from the Belgian coast to the shores of France, from where the crossing to Kent is considerably shorter.

On the visit to Calais to inspect efforts to tackle illegal immigration, Mr Darmanin also called for more cooperation with other European Union countries.

The French authorities arrested 120 traffickers and detained 4,000 people trying to cross into the country from Belgium last month, he said.

Annelies Verlinden, the Belgian home affairs minister, hit out at the implication that the country was not doing enough.

“I don’t think any country benefits from pointing at each other and looking for a culprit,” she told VRT, a broadcaster. “It’s no use pointing the finger at each other. We must find a solution to this problem of transmigrants together, because this requires European collaboration and co-ordination.”

The British and French governments have worked together unsuccessfully for years to prevent cross-channel migration. To curb arrivals in France, Mr Darmanin has proposed the creation of more Eu-funded migrant camps in southern Europe, modelled on Greek centres with watchtowers, to house people as they arrive in the bloc.

He also announced that France would champion new EU-UK negotiations for a migration treaty, an element of cooperation excluded from the post-brexit relationship. “We need to negotiate a treaty, since Mr Barnier did not do so when he negotiated Brexit, which binds us on migration issues,” he said.