UK and France to sign Calais security deal

By The Guardian

Deal contains measures to tackle human traffickers and commitments to boost humanitarian support for vulnerable migrants

British and French ministers are to meet in Calais on Thursday to sign an agreement aimed at alleviating the disturbances involving migrants at the French port.

The French interior ministry said the UK home secretary, Theresa May, would travel to Calais to sign the agreement with her French counterpart, Bernard Cazeneuve. The pair will tour the Eurotunnel site in Coquelles before Cazeneuve travels to Berlin to meet the German interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, for talks on Europe’s migration policies.

The proposed deal will focus on improving security at the port, where thousands of migrants have attempted to stow away on vehicles waiting to cross the Channel or on trains passing through the Channel tunnel. It will contain measures to deal with human traffickers who facilitate migrants’ journeys, and commitments to boost humanitarian support for the most vulnerable.

At least nine people are known to have died trying to make the journey into Britain since June, and at the height of the crisis in late July an estimated 2,000 attempts to break into the port terminal were said to have been made on two successive nights.

Britain has pledged £22m so far towards improving security at Calais. Previous talks involving David Cameron and the French president, François Hollande, led to a string of measures to improve security, including extra fencing, more search teams, additional CCTV cameras, infrared detectors and floodlights. These are considered to have had a significant effect, with sources revealing last week that the number of migrant attempts had fallen to between 100 and 200 a night.

Last weekend the prime minister said many migrants attempting to get into Britain were doing so for economic reasons, and that he was determined to make sure the border was secure.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “What we can’t do is allow people to break into our country. A lot of people coming to Europe are coming in search of a better life. They are economic migrants and they want to enter Britain illegally, and the British people and I want to make sure our borders are secure and you can’t break into Britain without permission.”

On Tuesday the EU border agency Frontex reported a record high of 107,500 migrants at the European Union’s borders last month. Germany, as Europe’s biggest economy, has become the top destination for refugees, with government sources claiming that the number of people seeking asylum in the country could surge to 750,000 this year.