Sunak Makes Deals With European Countries to Tackle Illegal Immigration

A group of illegal immigrants in a small boat travelling France and heading in the direction of Dover, England, on Aug. 29, 2023. Gareth Fuller/PA

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has agreed deals with Belgium, Bulgaria, and Serbia about increasing intelligence-sharing and cooperation to combat people trafficking and organised illegal immigration.

The initiatives, brokered during a summit in the Spanish city of Granada, came as Mr. Sunak and the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, described the flow of illegal migrants from Africa and Asia to Europe as a “moral crisis.”

Britain has agreed a deal to work with Belgium on disrupting organised immigration crime and clandestine entry to Britain and UK police will work closer with Serbian and Bulgarian law enforcement to disrupt criminal networks.

In January, Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai, an Afghan asylum seeker who had lied about his age, was convicted of murdering Thomas Roberts, 21, in Bournemouth.

The British authorities only learned—after Mr. Roberts was killed—that Mr. Abdulrahimzai had been convicted in absentia in Serbia of the murder of two fellow Afghan migrants who were shot dead with a Kalashnikov rifle in August 2018 after a dispute about people-trafficking.

After Brexit the UK lost its automatic access to shared intelligence with other European Union law enforcement agencies, but Mr. Sunak is working to secure a deal to allow Britain to access the Frontex database.

Mr, Sunak chaired a meeting with Ms. Meloni at the European Political Community summit in Granada on Thursday which included Albania and several other non-EU nations, and said he sought to “strengthen European action to ending illegal migration.”

Downing Street said an eight-point plan had been agreed, including a commitment to “tackle migrant smuggling along the routes and at external borders” and strengthen cooperation on visas.

Sunak: ‘Shared European Challenge’

Speaking in Granada, Mr. Sunak said, “Tackling illegal migration is a shared European challenge, numbers are up everywhere and I believe, as do other European leaders, that it should be us who decide who comes to our countries and not criminal gangs.”

Asked if there would be an agreement on Frontex, Mr. Sunak replied: “We’ve been working with the European Union, making progress on those talks. Those talks are ongoing, we’re always looking for ways to strengthen our cooperation with partner countries and entities to combat illegal migration.”

The Telegraph claimed the Frontex deal had been agreed and would improve the UK Border Force’s understanding of smuggler routes through Europe.

Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (R) chats with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (L) during a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, on July 12, 2023. PA

French President Emmanuel Macron said, “If the EU, UK, and Western Balkans work together we can prevent a lot of illegal migration.”

In a joint editorial for The Times of London, Mr. Sunak and Ms. Meloni said: “Every week, thousands of migrants cross the Mediterranean to Italy, entering Europe illegally. Many make their way north and cross the Channel to the UK. That’s why, as the prime ministers of Italy and the UK, we are working together to stop the boats and we are calling on others to act with the same sense of urgency.”

‘Moral Crisis’

“This is a moral crisis, with criminal gangs exploiting and profiting from the misery of the vulnerable. It is a humanitarian crisis, with shipwrecks of unsafe craft claiming over 2,000 lives already this year,” the pair added.

The majority of the migrant deaths have been in the Mediterranean, but in August six migrants died in the English Channel when their boat sank, but 60 were rescued.

A map on the Frontex website showed 114,625 migrants were caught crossing the Mediterranean between Libya and Italy in the first eight months of this year. The biggest nationalities among those illegal immigrants were 13,788 Guineans and 13,624 from Côte d'Ivoire.

In the far western Mediterranean only 9,447 were identified as crossing from Morocco to Spain in the same period and 24,094 were caught crossing from Turkey to Greece, either by land or sea, with the biggest nationalities being 6,171 Syrians.

Another 70,548 made it through the Balkans as far as the borders of Slovenia, Italy, or Austria, 34,244 of whom were from Syria.

The Home Office said more than 25,000 people have been detected crossing the English Channel in small boats so far this year—compared to 33,000 on Oct. 2, 2022—which means the annual figure is set to be down on the 45,774 who arrived in the whole of 2022.

PA Media contributed to this report.