The Interior Ministry announced on Wednesday that 172 boats have managed to cross the Channel since the start of the year, compared to 265 in the first five months of last year.
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The number of successful Channel crossings fell by 35% between the start of 2022 and the same period in 2023, franceinfo learned on Wednesday June 7 from the Ministry of the Interior. 265 boats managed to cross the Channel in the first five months of 2022, there were only 172 at the start of the year.
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In total, 7,296 migrants have managed to reach the United Kingdom since the start of 2023 compared to 8,822 last year, a 17% drop. The average number of candidates per boat has increased to around 42 people since the beginning of 2023, compared to 33 last year over the same period.
The Ministry of the Interior also indicates that nearly a hundred traffickers transporting nautical equipment have been arrested since the beginning of the year, i.e. as many as over the same period of 2022. Ten sectors of “small boats”, makeshift boats, were dismantled in 2023 by the Mobile Research Brigades of the Border Police (BMR de la PAF), “causing significant logistical, human and material losses for the networks”, underlines the ministry. Nearly two-thirds of these trafficking operations (63.4%) have thus failed this year, compared to 61.3% in 2022.
Migrants now cross in water taxis
The Ministry of the Interior considers this assessment “all the more interesting since the weather conditions cannot be retained as an explanatory criterion”. Between January 1 and May 21, 2022, 77 days had been identified as favorable or possible for crossings. This year, over the same period, 84 days benefited from these same conditions. The Ministry would like to point out that the interventions of the authorities “now take place in the face of new operating methods such as “taxi boats””these water taxis, bigger and overloaded zodiacs, “which make interventions even more complex”.
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“The results presented demonstrate an absolute commitment of the internal security forces and a fruitful coordination between the land, air, and maritime devices”welcomes the ministry.