While the fight against immigration has become a priority in the UK since Brexit, the country is facing record arrivals of migrants.
According to the PA news agency, more than 14,000 have arrived on the shores of southern England since the start of the year illegally crossing the Channel.
A number that greatly exceeds the 8,000 migrants who arrived over the whole of last year.
The British government has been pressuring France for a while to step up its efforts to prevent these crossings.
But with a new wave observed in recent days, facilitated by the good weather, the tone has risen a notch on the English side.
Boats turned back before their arrival
According to the British press, the British Minister of the Interior Priti Patel threatened earlier this week not to pay more than 60 million euros promised to finance the strengthening of the presence of the French police on the coasts. At the end of a meeting Wednesday in London with her French counterpart Gerald Darmanin, she indicated that she wanted to obtain "results". According to the British press, she wants the British Border Force to train to turn back the boats before they reach the English coast.
The Times states that Priti Patel called for the UK's interpretation of international maritime law to be rewritten in this sense.
This strategy, which has received the approval of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, would only be used in "very limited circumstances" according to the Telegraph, for larger ships and when the situation is deemed safe.
"Contrary to the law of the sea"
"France will not accept any practice contrary to the law of the sea, nor any financial blackmail", reacted on Twitter Gerald Darmanin. “Britain's commitment must be kept. I made it clear to my counterpart ”. For London, such methods of refoulement are necessary to deter the smugglers who endanger many lives. But for Paris, they are contrary to international maritime law and entail risks for the safety of makeshift boats that undertake the crossing.
“At sea, the safeguard of human life takes precedence over considerations of nationality, status and migration policy,” insisted the French minister in a letter sent Monday to Priti Patel.
He also rejected the British proposal to create a "single joint command center" for French and British forces, judging it contrary to French sovereignty and unnecessary because coordination on the ground is already "good and efficient".
Much larger ferry boats
He underlined that the increase in the number of migrants disembarking in the United Kingdom was mainly explained by the use of smugglers to larger capacity boats, "able to accommodate up to 65 people" against fifteen previously, sometimes carrying infants, elderly or disabled.
He also noted “new diversion strategies” with “bait boats” saturating the intervention systems.
"We depend for a lot on what the French do," Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted to Parliament on Wednesday, as anger roars in his conservative majority.
"But, it is clear that we are going to have to use all possible tactics to end an infamous trade."
Eleven deaths and three missing since 2018
In mid-August, the sinking of a boat caused the death of an Eritrean migrant.
Last year, four members of an Iranian Kurdish family died and their one-year-old child was missing before being found, according to British media, several months later on the Norwegian coast.
"The size of the boats has increased, they are now mainly semi-rigid with sometimes 20, 30, 40 people on board, sometimes more than 50", explained Philippe Dutrieux, maritime prefect of the Channel and the North Sea, noting the danger in the event of a shipwreck.
“Since 2018, we are in all eleven deaths and three missing.
It is considerable and at the same time, it is a miracle that there are not more given the dangerousness of the area and the precariousness in which these people go ”.
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