France and the United Kingdom agreed Thursday on a “pilot project” for the exchange of migrants at the end of the state visit of the French president Emmanuel Macron, while the crossings of the Channel reach record figures.
“Revolutionary” agreement
This agreement, which must still be submitted to the European Commission before being signed, is based on the principle of “one for one”.
He provides for the dismissal in France of a migrant who arrived in the United Kingdom by Petit Bateau, in exchange for which London undertakes to accept a migrant in France and expressing his will, via an online platform, to settle in the United Kingdom and justifying links with this country.
“For the first time, migrants arriving in small boats will be arrested and then returned quickly to France,” said British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a press conference at the Northwood military base (north-west London), delighted with a “revolutionary” agreement on a project likely to start “in the coming weeks”.
Macron tance le Brexit
More than 21,000 migrants have gone through the Channel since the start of the year, a record level that increases pressure on the Labor leader, when the anti-immigration party Reform UK of Nigel Farage is gaining momentum in opinion.
Emmanuel Macron, for his part, implicated Brexit, stressing that he no longer existed since then “no migratory agreement with the European Union” and that this created an “incentive” to cross the English Channel. He estimated that this pilot project “will have a very dissuasive effect on the model of smugglers and on crossings”.
No encrypted clarification was provided on this agreement, found after intense negotiations at a bilateral summit in conclusion of a three -day state visit by the French president, the first for an EU head of state from Brexit in 2020. The figure mentioned in the press of 50 migrants per week exchanged – deemed insufficient by the conservative opposition – was not confirmed.
“Absurd” and “dangerous”
The NGO Doctors Without Borders judged that this project was “not only absurd”, but “also extremely dangerous”.
For its part, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) praised a project which, “if it is implemented in an appropriate manner”, could “offer access to protection to asylum seekers and refugees on both sides of the English Channel”.
The fact remains that five EU countries – Spanish, Greece, Italy, Malta and Cyprus had expressed in June their “concern”, fearing that France would then return the migrants to the first EU country in which they arrived.