Crossing Channel by migrants: London will pay to France promised money

The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, called on Saturday, October 9, the British Government to “keep his promise” of financial support to the fight against migratory traffic on the French coast.

Le Monde with AFP

Three hundred and forty-two migrants who were trying to join England on fortune boats were rescued Sunday, October 10, 1,115 had been rescued or intercepted on Friday and Saturday. The subject is a source of friction between London and Paris.

To defuse tensions, the British government announced, Monday, October 11, that it would pay for France the promised money to combat migrant trafficking from the French coast. Asked by the BBC on the date on which this money would be given to France, the British Secretary of State in charge of the Interior, Damian Hinds, said that this question will be “finalized in the coming weeks”. Mr. Hinds said it was an “administrative process” rather than a “political question” that had delayed the amount of money by France.

Promise d financial support

On a trip Saturday in Loon-Plage, in the north of France, Gérald Darmanin, the French Minister of the Interior, had asked the British government to honor his commitment to pay to France 62.7 Millions of euros in 2021-2022 to finance the strengthening of the French forces on the coast. “We call the English to keep their funding promise, since we hold the border for them,” he said. Mr. Darmanin also requested that a migration treaty between the EU and the United Kingdom negotiated.

Since the end of 2018, the illegal crossings of the Channel by migrants seeking to win the United Kingdom multiply despite the repeated warnings of the authorities, which emphasize the danger related to the density of traffic, with strong currents. and at the low temperature of the water.

According to the statement of the British press agency Pa, more than 17,000 migrants have been successful since the beginning of the year to crossing it to England on board small boats, more than double that on the ‘set of the year 2020.

The British government has begun to pass a bill, controversial, which reform the asylum system and plans to tighten the sanctions, bringing to the life prison, against fourteen years now, the maximum penalty incurred by smugglers.

/Media reports.