France, UK to step up curb on Channel crossings as major migrant camp cleared
French police cleared a major migrant camp on Tuesday that was home to around a thousand people hoping to cross the Channel to reach Britain. This came a day after French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and his British counterpart Priti Patel announced their mutual determination “to prevent 100% of crossings”.
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On Tuesday morning, French interior minister Darmanin announced that "on his orders" police had cleared a camp in Grande-Synthe, near the port of Dunkirk, which is one of the main departure points for Britain.
According to the prefecture of the Nord region, the main camp in Grande-Synthe is home to around 1,000 people. They will be taken to temporary shelters in the north of the country or other regions.
Socialist mayor of Grande-Synthe, Martial Beyaert, estimated the the number of people at the camp to be closer to 1,500, many of them Kurds.
"We need to find a solution for these people, especially as winter is coming," a member of his staff said.
"The state prevents them from heading out to sea, and the state is preventing them from staying here - it's a vicious cycle."
French police regularly clear camps around Calais and Dunkirk, offering migrants there the opportunity to lodge an asylum request in France and move to a shelter, which many refuse because they prefer to continue their journeys to Britain.
The move to clear the camp comes the day after a telephone conference between Darmanin and his British counterpart UK home secretary Priti Patel.
Darmanin's aides insist the clearance was "scheduled for this date" before the phone call took place.
The tension has been rising in past months, with the UK accusing France of not doing enough to prevent migrant crossings despite throwing 63 million euros at the problem.
Je me suis entretenu hier soir avec mon homologue britannique @pritipatel sur le sujet des petites embarcations traversant la Manche.
— Gérald DARMANIN (@GDarmanin) November 16, 2021
Nous allons poursuivre notre coopération opérationnelle et renforcer notre action commune contre les réseaux de passeurs. pic.twitter.com/ThpbrV0RjB
Technical solutions
The two ministers on Monday evening discussed the issue of small boats crossing the Channel and the operational response to it, in particular additional technical solutions to tackle organised crime groups, according to their joint statement.
"Both the home secretary and interior minister agreed to strengthen operational cooperation further. More must be done to stop the dangerous crossings. They agreed to accelerate the delivery of the commitments made in the joint agreement of July 2021 to deliver on their joint determination to prevent 100% of crossings and make this deadly route unviable," the statement said.
"It was agreed that the joint technical working group will meet imminently with a view to permitting the use of new technology as rapidly as possible. The two ministers also committed to reinforcing intelligence sharing and police cooperation," it said.
Record number of small boat crossings
A record number of migrants crossed the Channel in small boats last Thursday -- 1,185 according to British figures -- which the British government described as "unacceptable".
Darmanin however has not hidden his frustration at suggestions that France is not doing enough.
Earlier Monday he gave a blunt interview to CNews in which he said Britain should "should stop using us as a punch-ball in their domestic politics," adding that the government had failed to sort out its unregulated labour market.
French police say while they are preventing more crossings, they cannot stop all attempts because there are too many migrants and the shoreline is too long to patrol constantly.
They also point to international maritime law, which prevents an intervention once those travelling to the UK are in a boat on the water.
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