Emmanuel Macron is reportedly set to reject calls from Rishi Sunak to return small boat asylum seekers to France. The Independent says that the French president will not publicly embarrass the Prime Minister over the issue when they meet in Paris today (February March 10) but after his calls for more safe and legal routes to the UK were ignored, he is not willing to change French policy.
The Independent says that sources made clear Mr Macron had not wavered in his position ahead of the first UK-France summit in five years. The French diplomatic source said that Mr Sunak’s newly unveiled plan to turn away all migrants on small boats had not persuaded Paris to change its stance.
And, in a reference to calls for more small boats to be stopped before they leave French beaches, the source added: “You can’t solve the issue only with more police on the coast.”
The UK Government is known to want a bilateral returns agreement with Paris, a deal that would allow London to immediately return those arriving on British shores unlawfully from France. With the meeting unlikely to lead to a breakthrough on such an accord, British ministers and diplomats are instead privately aiming to cajole Mr Macron’s administration into being a driving force behind an EU-wide returns agreement with the UK.
Labour said Mr Sunak will have “failed” if he comes back to the UK without a returns agreement. Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “We need a new agreement with France. Rishi Sunak will have failed if he comes back from the summit without a new returns agreement and new joint arrangements to prevent dangerous boat crossings.”
The talks between the leaders come days after Mr Sunak and Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who will also meet with her counterpart in the French capital, unveiled the Illegal Migration Bill. The legislation would see migrants who arrive through unauthorised means deported and hit with a lifetime ban from returning.
It is thought Mr Macron is likely to want to hear from the Prime Minister about how the Bill will make Britain a less attractive destination for migrants. Downing Street stressed that the gathering at the Elysee Palace “isn’t a summit on a single issue”, with energy security, the conflict in Ukraine and the “challenge posed by China” likely to be touched upon.
But the Prime Minister’s official spokesman confirmed Mr Sunak will look to raise his ambitions of working more closely on the issue of Channel crossings. The spokesman told reporters: “Certainly we are going in there with an ambition to go further on stopping the boats making these dangerous crossings.”
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The No 10 official pointed to the multimillion-pound agreement already in place with France, designed to help prevent crossings and target human trafficking gangs, as a pact to be built upon. A revised deal announced in November was worth around £63m, representing a hike of about £8m from a similar pledge signed in 2021.
Under the commitment, the number of French officers patrolling beaches on the country’s northern coastline rose from 200 to 300, while British officers for the first time were also permitted to be stationed in French control rooms and on the approaches to beaches to observe operations.
Nearly 3,000 people have arrived via small boats in the UK already this year but the PA news agency understands that France has successfully prevented around the same number from embarking on the journey.
The Prime Minister told a select group of reporters during a visit to Dover on Tuesday: “We want to work together with the French so we can build on the joint approach we agreed last year and keep stepping up patrols and enforcement activity to clamp down on the gangs and stop more boats.
The summit – a once regular event in the political calendar that has been revived by Mr Sunak – is being viewed as a thawing in cross-Channel relations. Tensions festered between London and Paris during Boris Johnson’s premiership, with Brexit causing frictions and sparking disputes over fishing grounds and trade.
During Liz Truss’s brief time as prime minister, she said the “jury is out” on whether Mr Macron was Britain’s friend. But Mr Macron has been seen to be on more cordial terms with Mr Sunak than the Prime Minister’s predecessors, with Paris sources reportedly briefing that the summit should be seen as the “beginning of a beautiful renewed friendship”.
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