The UK agreed on Nov. 14 to a new deal with France to stop illegal immigrants from crossing into the UK on small boats.
The agreement comes after 40,000 people have so far successfully made the journey across the English Channel this year.
British Home Secretary Suella Braverman signed the deal with her French counterpart, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, raising the UK’s payment to France to 63 million pounds ($74 million) from 55 million pounds ($64.5 million) per year.
The funding will also go toward border patrol equipment and migrant centers.
“Cutting-edge surveillance technology, drones, detection dog teams, CCTV, and helicopters” will help detect and prevent crossings from the French coasts, according to the statement.
Some investment will support illegal migrant reception and removal centres to prevent people who enter France via the Mediterranean route from embarking on journeys across the English Channel, hold those who are caught trying to leave France for the UK, and support their voluntary returns to their countries of origin “where appropriate, safe, and legal.”
The Franco–British deal will also see British and French border forces embedding officers in each other’s teams to increase understanding of the threat.
A task force will be formed to focus on “reversing the recent rise in Albanian nationals and organised crime groups exploiting illegal migration routes into Western Europe and the UK.”
A UK–France joint monitoring committee will keep the measures and their implementation under review.
The ministers said they expect to speak with neighbouring countries soon to “ensure a multilateral approach” on illegal migration, including on disrupting traffickers’ operations before they reach France.
They’re also set to meet their Group of Seven counterparts in Frankfurt later this week.
The ministers said the two countries’ existing deal has already seen the prevention of more than 23,000 small boat crossings in 2021 and more than 30,000 crossings this year, as well as the dismantling of 55 organised crime groups and more than 500 arrests.
Downing Street stated that the increase in beach patrols in northern France would “increase early detection,” while the presence of UK staff in French control rooms would boost understanding of the “threat” at hand and help inform deployments.
But Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, claimed that the deal fails to address the factors behind people choosing to put themselves at risk by trying to reach the UK in the first place and will, therefore, “do little to end the crossings.”
He called for a focus on creating more “safe routes” and working with the European Union and other countries to “share responsibility” for the “global challenge,” while urging the government to do “far more” to reduce the backlogs in the current asylum system.
“The government must take a more comprehensive approach and create an orderly, fair, and humane asylum system that recognises that the vast majority of those taking dangerous journey are refugees escaping for their lives,” he said.
“It needs to face up to the fact it is a global issue which will not be resolved by enforcement measures alone.”
