France has asked Britain to start accepting asylum requests from people in the European Union after a boat accident on Tuesday that killed 12 migrants.
Some of the victims were children, and French officials said most of the dead were from Eritrea or other African nations. The boat sank in the English Channel.
Soon after the tragedy, France’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, blamed the UK for the incident.
In a social media post, the interior minister called the event a “terrible shipwreck” and criticized “criminal smugglers” for packing 70 people onto a boat less than seven meters long.
During a press conference on Tuesday evening, Darmanin expressed his wish to rebuild a “normal migration relationship” with the UK, which he called France’s “friend and neighbor.”
He suggested a new treaty between Britain and the entire European Union, as all 27 member countries are considered “safe” nations.
He said, “The solution is to create a treaty between the UK and the EU, not just France, that links asylum requests to the approval of asylum in the UK.”
“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 failed and didn’t stop the human traffickers.” He also mentioned that the “tens of millions of Euros we negotiate each year with our British friends, who only cover a third of what we spend” on patrolling French beaches, won’t do much to stop the thousands of illegal crossings.
However, any new treaty ideas proposed by France or the EU are likely to be rejected.
While Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called Tuesday’s boat sinking “horrifying and deeply tragic,” she emphasized the Labour Government’s focus on tackling “dangerous and criminal smuggler gangs.”
Sir Keir Starmer has suggested he might be open to a new agreement that would allow the UK to send illegal migrants back to the EU countries where they first arrived, but he has ruled out a deal that would involve Britain accepting thousands of migrants from the EU.
On a global level, Britain is looking to speed up the return of migrants to 11 countries, including Iraq, Ethiopia, and Vietnam. According to Home Office data, Vietnam has seen a rise in illegal arrivals, and the UK aims to reduce the number of people staying without proper work or study permits.
