The Minister of the Interior regrets that the treaty was not included in Brexit.
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“This is the real and good solution”, said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin on Thursday 3 February on France Bleu Nord, while the President of the Republic reaffirmed before the European Ministers of the Interior in Tourcoing on Wednesday evening his desire to rebuild bilateral relations between the European Union European Union and the United Kingdom to define a legal immigration route across the Channel. All these ministers must work on this subject, in particular Thursday and Friday in Lille.
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“As long as there is no agreement between the European Union and Great Britain on legal access routes to Great Britain (…), there will always be in Belgium, the Netherlands and especially in France migrants who will be there and will try to cross to the other side in an absolutely awful way”, assures the minister. Dyears an interview with the French regional daily The voice of the North, Emmanuel Macron criticizes the “British to have a system of the 1980s which manages economic immigration by hypocrisy: there is no legal way of immigration and they accept underpaid illegal immigration”.
For Gérald Darmanin, only legal access routes can stop “what we have unfortunately known for 25 years on the Calais coast, where hundreds of migrants are waiting to be able to cross the Channel, at their own risk.” While France has been asking the United Kingdom for a year, in particular concerning family reunifications, Gérald Darmanin “regrets that Boris Johnson is entangled in domestic politics and does not take the time to discuss these legal avenues of access” and recalls that the United Kingdom “has not left democracy and has not left the right of asylum”.
“This European treaty between Great Britain and the European Union was not negotiated at the time of Brexit, perhaps this is a mistake and we must fix it”he concedes before adding that “It was very complicated, Brexit, I’m not throwing stones at anyone”.
The Minister of the Interior wishes to recall that he “there are 15 times fewer migrants than 5 years ago” and “We relocate 12,000 people each year – last year it was even 14,000 people – and as we speak there are still 300 free places in hotels in Calais. Everyone plays their part. Tourcoing, the last year, took a hundred migrants to welcome and accompany them”.