France demands migrants from ANYWHERE in the EU be allowed to claim asylum in Britain
France has called for a new treaty between Britain and the EU
PA/REUTERS
France has called for Britain to accept asylum claims from within the European Union in the wake of Tuesday's boat disaster which killed 12 migrants.
A number of children were among the casualties after the boat capsized in the English Channel yesterday afternoon - with French authorities declaring most of the dead were from Eritrea or other African countries.
But just hours after the tragedy, Gerald Darmanin, France's interior minister - the country's equivalent to Britain's Home Secretary - laid the blame at the UK's door.
Darmanin said that without a new asylum agreement between the EU and the UK, "we will be condemned to see the small boats continue".
Darmanin laid the blame for small boat crossings at the UK's door
REUTERS
Emergency services gathered in Boulogne-sur-Mer to meet Darmanin after the tragedy
REUTERS
Writing on social media, the interior minister called the incident a "terrible shipwreck" and laid into "criminal smugglers" for cramming 70 people onto a vessel fewer than seven metres long.
But at a press conference on Tuesday evening, Darmanin signalled his desire to re-establish a "classic migration relationship" with the UK, which he described as France's "friend and neighbour".
The interior minister called for a new treaty between Britain and the bloc - all 27 member states of which are designated "safe" nations.
He said: "The solution is... to do a treaty that allows the UK and the EU, not just France and the UK, to create a causal link between asylum requests and the granting of asylum in the UK.
MORE ON THE MIGRANT CRISIS:
Darmanin signalled his desire to re-establish a "classic migration relationship" with the UK
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"Otherwise, we will be condemned to see the small boats continue."
Darmanin declared that migrants were driven to embark on illegal crossings because they can "often work without papers" and are "very rarely expelled" from the UK.
He lambasted current and former British measures to deal with the crisis, particularly the Conservative Government's Rwanda deportation scheme - which was swiftly binned off after Labour came to power.
Darmanin said: "The Rwanda deal has fallen through and didn’t deter the human traffickers," adding that the "tens of millions of Euros we negotiate every year with our British friends, who only pay a third of what we spend" on policing French beaches would do little to quell the thousands of illegal crossings.
Darmanin declared that migrants were driven to embark on illegal crossings because they are "very rarely expelled" from the UK
PA
Yvette Cooper reiterated the Labour Government's focus of tackling "dangerous and criminal smuggler gangs"
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Sir Keir Starmer has hinted that he would be open to a fresh agreement allowing the UK to return illegal migrants to the EU
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But any new treaty ideas presented by France or the EU would likely be rebuffed.
Though Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called Tuesday's sinking "horrifying and deeply tragic", she reiterated the Labour Government's focus of tackling "dangerous and criminal smuggler gangs".
Sir Keir Starmer has hinted that he would be open to a fresh agreement allowing the UK to return illegal migrants to the EU countries in which they first arrived - but has vetoed a similar deal which would see Britain accept thousands of migrants from the EU.
Globally, Britain is seeking to accelerate returns of migrants to 11 countries - including Iraq, Ethiopia and Vietnam, the latter of which has contributed a surge in illegal arrivals according to quarterly Home Office data, in a bid to reduce the number of people residing in the country without sufficient work or study documentation.