“The dismantling of the Calais jungle has not resolved anything”, estimates Sunday, October 24 on franceinfo Patrick Martin-Genier, teacher at Sciences Po and specialist in European issues and the United Kingdom. Five years after the closure of this migrant camp, crossings of the Channel have not decreased and are even increasing sharply, while the United Kingdom intends to tighten its right of asylum.
franceinfo: The Touquet accords, signed in 2003, placed the Franco-British border in France. Without a visa, no one can go to English soil, controls are also the responsibility of the French. Has Brexit changed anything in this situation?
Patrick Martin-Genier: Brexit has not changed anything since there is still this willingness of migrants to go to the United Kingdom because we can hide there more easily, we can work, there is a need for labor , and under family reunification, many want to go to the UK. In addition, the Touquet agreements were not European, but a bilateral agreement. This desire to cross the Channel has increased considerably, during the first eight months of the year, between 15 and 18,000 people made this crossing, this pressure has never ceased. Several tens of kilometers of beach must be monitored in the Calais region, and the dismantling of the jungle has not resolved anything. France is doing its duty, loyally, in applying the Calais agreements, but we lack the material and human resources to have very effective control. As in the Mediterranean, it is extremely difficult to verify all the flows.
Since the Touquet agreements, the conditions for the payment of financial compensation from the United Kingdom to France to carry out the checks have been specified. 70 million euros have been guaranteed to France to monitor the Channel, but the money has still not arrived …
Since the Touquet agreements, the British consider that their migration policy begins in Calais, France, and that we are in a way their subcontractor to prevent all crossings of the Channel, and the migrations they consider illegal on their territory. British Home Secretary Priti Patel accuses France of not doing its job properly and therefore there is no need to pay it this money. It’s in the order of 163 million euros, 54 million pounds. It is a kind of political financial blackmail. There is again a crisis between the two countries. Even though the British Home Secretary said she was going to pay the money, we still have not seen the color.
The British want to tighten their right to asylum and their law against illegal aliens. The text even provides that boats arriving via the Channel can be pushed back. Is the UK shutting down more and more?
Not only is it closing itself more and more, but if the British government followed through on this threat, it would be a complete breach of the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees, it would be a clear violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. human rights, and the new bill under discussion contains serious provisions which are in serious breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. It is an extremely severe provision that contains numerous violations, against which non-governmental and human rights organizations are protesting.