French President Emmanuel Macron is set to finally lift a ban on police stopping migrant boats at sea.
The new legislation would allow officers to tackle migrants out of boats that are sailing in shallow waters.
French interior minister Bruno Retailleau said he is looking to change the law to allow police to use their own boats for the first time to take on people smugglers carrying migrants to the UK in overcrowded vessels.
In a joint meeting with Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Retailleau said he was considering a variety of legal changes to step up enforcement of small boats, reports The Telegraph.
Yvette Cooper and Bruno Retailleau hold a press conference
Getty
French law currently prohibits police from tackling a migrant boat once it has come into the water, meaning officers are only able to launch a rescue operation.
To get around this, smuggling gangs have started using "taxi boats" which stay in the water collecting migrants from beaches in Northern France without going on land, enabling smugglers to evade capture.
Smugglers started using the tactic after French and UK forces blocked several rivers leading to the Channel with floating dams, to prevent small boats from accessing the sea. It is now the most popular way of smuggling people across the Channel.
Officials in both Paris and Westminster have expressed concern that the practice will increase the number of boats crossing when the weather improves.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
- Wethersfield local HORRIFIED at migrant takeover as asylum seekers ‘could soon outnumber’ village residents
- Asylum seeker hotels set to receive 45% of Britain's new reduced aid budget as Labour MPs fume
- Asylum seeker awarded £100k after complaining she was 'treated like a criminal' when overstaying in Britain: 'Reckless disregard for her rights'
Macron's government has announced a wave of measures
Getty
Retailleau told reporters: "We need to rethink our approach so that we can intercept the boats...We must be able to intercept them within 300m of the coast. They have a naval service, the gendarmerie, and they must be able to intervene in shallow waters."
He was speaking as part of a joint visit to Le Toquet, a popular resort town that has seen many migrant crossings in recent years. It was the first visit by a British Home Secretary to northern France since 2020.
It comes as Macron's government is under pressure from Marine Le Pen's hard-right National Rally party, which has its highest levels of support in the north of the country.
Cooper said: "Criminal smuggler gangs are running an appalling and dangerous trade in people – undermining UK and French border security, causing huge damage and putting lives at risk. The gangs operate across borders, so law enforcement needs to operate across borders too."
Migrants aboard a small boatPAFigures revealed earlier this week showed more than 108,000 people applied for asylum in the UK last year – the highest number for any 12-month period since current records began in 2001, figures show.
The total of 108,138 asylum seekers is up 18 per cent from 91,811 in 2023, according to data published by the Home Office.
The previous record was 103,081 in the 12 months to December 2002. Migrants who made the journey to the UK across the English Channel in small boats accounted for 32 per cent of the total in 2024.
Meanwhile, France is under pressure to rip up a decades-old agreement that makes it easier for Algerian citizens to move to France unless Algeria agrees to take back those who are deported by the French authorities.
Already strained ties between Paris and Algiers have worsened further after an Algerian citizen whom France had long tried unsuccessfully to repatriate killed one person and injured three in a knife attack in the city of Mulhouse on Saturday.
