France is struggling to develop operational cooperation agreements with the United Kingdom to reduce the number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats.
Such conclusions have been reached in the latest report of France’s Court of Accounts, according to AP.
The body in charge of auditing the use of public funds found that the UK is not sufficiently coordinating with France to reduce the number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats.
The report focuses on a joint intelligence unit formed in 2020 in order to fight human smuggling and reduce the number of those crossing the Channel. This team, in 2022, helped dismantle seven people-smuggling networks.
Based on the court’s findings, the UK doesn’t provide usable information on the departure of small boats; it provides very general, first-level information that has not been counter-checked.
Besides, the report notes that information on the circumstances in which migrants arrive and their nationalities appear to be very patchy, stressing that the relationship between France and the UK is, therefore, unbalanced in terms of information and intelligence exchange.
However, such claims have been rejected by authorities in the UK. Through a statement, the UK Home Office said that the report uses outdated information and doesn’t represent the UK’s collaboration, taking also into account intelligence sharing with France.
In the last two years, we have taken more robust action alongside them to crack down on vile people-smuggling gangs and stop the boats. We continue to work closely with French partners at all levels, helping to drive forward improvements in the prevention of crossing attempts, both on the beaches and long before they reach them.
In August last year, the figures from the Home Office revealed that the number of people who crossed the English Channel in small boats surpassed 100,000 in the past few years.
The statistics provided by the same source revealed that there was a significant year-on-year increase, with only 299 small boat arrivals registered in 2018, compared to 28,526 registered in 2021 and 45,755 in 2022.
In its recent report, the Court of Account proposed enacting policies that would encourage migrants to voluntarily move back to their home countries by offering them money. The Court considered that such policies have been proven to have a significant efficiency, stressing that France is lagging behind the UK and Germany in this regard.
