"Our British friends must play a bigger role," said Eric Besson while on a visit to Calais where he pledged to shut down a vast migrant squat known as "the jungle", which is home to 800 migrants and where a London student was raped last year.
"The jungle will cease to exist," he said as he visited a chemical factory next to the shanty town that has endured repeated thefts.
"Only the clear and credible message that the border to England cannot be crossed will result in dissuading illegal immigration networks from settling in Calais in the long run," he said.
And he urged British authorities to sign up to an agreement making Calais a passport-free zone to help France get rid of thousands of migrants.
He said he intended to discuss the issue at a France-UK summit on July 6.
The migrants, mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and African countries, would not be abandoned, he said. Instead, they would be offered food, showers and information on how to claim asylum in the welcome centres.
He denied that these would be "mini-Sangattes" – referring to the Red Cross Centre that acted as a magnet to thousands of migrants hoping to reach Britain before it was closed in 2002. "There will be no new Sangatte," he said.
The new measures would allow local authorities to "better treat people without papers, without setting anything permanent", he said.
On Tuesday, 500 police officers arrested 194 migrants in and around "the jungle" in an operation aimed, they said, at breaking up people smuggling gangs that charge up to £1,000 for illegal passage to England. Mr Besson said the operation had been a success, but all those detained were released without charge.
He called on Britain to do more to solve the problem. "Britain must reinforce its controls, take a more important financial slice of the burden and must above all ask itself why illegal work on its territory is considered by traffickers and migrants alike as so enticing," he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment