• At the end of November, 27 migrants were killed while trying to cross the Strait of Pas-de-Calais.

  • Gérald Darmanin had announced the arrival of a Frontex plane to monitor the coast.

  • It is a device of the Danish army which carries out this mission for a week, between Pas-de-Calais and the border of the Netherlands.

At the request of a French minister, a Danish army plane, commissioned by a European agency, will monitor the border with Great Britain. This is the only concrete measure announced by Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior, after the tragedy which claimed the lives of 27 migrants in the North Sea on November 24. But what exactly will this Frontex plane be watching?

It's been a little less than a week since the Frontex plane promised by Gérald Darmanin was based at Lille-Lesquin airport for its mission on the Nord-Pas-de-Calais coast.

It is an aircraft of the Air Force of the Kingdom of Denmark (Royal Danish Air Force aka the RDAF) made available to Frontex within the framework of the agreements between the agency and the European countries.

This aircraft is a Bombardier CL-604 Challenger equipped to perform surface surveillance, meteorological or even oil spill detection.

A plane that can be traced

This Monday, for example, the plane took off shortly after 7 a.m. to reach the coast. Since then, he has increased back and forth between Le Touquet and Belgium, up to the border with the Netherlands. The aircraft flew over the coast, and not the sea, and lingered particularly over the towns of Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer. On mission, its average flight altitude was 900 m, with however periods when the aircraft descended below 400 m. For this morning, the Challenger finished its mission by returning to Lille at 1:18 p.m.

Several questions arise, in particular on the perimeter covered by this aircraft. While we know that migrant crossings are starting more and more from the south of the region, from the Somme, due to the increased surveillance of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, why the military apparatus is stopping he at Le Touquet? When announcing the establishment of this device, Gérald Darmanin explained that cooperation would extend between France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Why does the Frontex mission stop at the Dutch border? When questioned, the Interior Ministry has not yet followed up.

On the other hand, Gérald Darmanin had clearly said that this means of surveillance of the coasts was implemented "to better dry up this migratory route".

Understand, fight against the channels of smugglers and illegal immigration and not to provide assistance to boats in difficulty.

Therefore, we can ask ourselves the question of the effectiveness of such an approach insofar as it is possible to follow in real time, on the Internet, the route of the Frontex plane thanks to its callsign which circulates on the social networks.

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  • Immigration

  • Migrants

  • Society

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