A British-French agreement aimed at reducing the number of people trying to cross the English Channel in small boats has been scrapped, London said Wednesday. The pilot programme was intended to break the business model of "people smugglers" by exchanging undocumented migrants who had made the crossing for people who legally applied for asylum.
A pilot programme between the UK and France that aimed to curb the number of people crossing the English Channel in small boats to migrate to Britain has been scrapped, Britain's government said Wednesday.
In a statement, the UK’s Home Office said the “one in, one out” deal is “no longer processing new cases."
Under the plan, people who arrived in the UK after making the dangerous Channel crossing could be detained and returned to France in exchange for an equivalent number of asylum seekers who applied through a safe and legal route.
The deal was agreed in 2025 by former British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in a bid to help a post-Brexit reset in Paris-London ties by easing what had become a major source of tension between the neighbours.
French daily Le Monde reported that while Starmer's successor Andy Burnham had pressed Macron during talks in September to keep the deal alive, "Paris was in a hurry to end the cooperation on controlling migrant flows."
However UK Interior Minister Shabana Mahmood acknowledged in parliament this month that the deal had "not been without its challenges" and "the numbers are still relatively small".
"What has been more operationally difficult is to scale up very large numbers of removals every week into the French system," she added.
Number of crossings falling dramatically
As part of the deal, some 1,117 asylum seekers came to the UK from France from August 2025 to June 2026 while 1,087 were deported, according to Home Office data. The deal, which initially set a target of 2,600 exchanges, was earmarked to last for three years, though there was a clause for both parties to bring it to an end earlier.
“We continue to work with France to relentlessly tackle small boat crossings, and we’ve made real progress," the Home Office said in a statement.
Though the scheme is “no longer processing new cases", the Home Office said deportation flights will continue in the coming weeks for those who have already been detained.
The number of people making the crossing has fallen sharply this year for a variety of reasons, including increased police patrols and enhanced surveillance in northern France.
As of Sunday, some 19,135 people had crossed the Channel from France so far in 2026, down 42 percent year-on-year.
The danger involved in those crossings was clear on Monday when a 10-year-old child and two women died, apparently trampled to death on a boat packed with more than 100 people.
At least 22 people have died this year trying to cross the Channel, according to an AFP tally based on official French and British sources.
A French court on Wednesday sentenced six men to between six and 10 years in prison over the deaths of at least 31 people in the Channel in November 2021, the deadliest accident involving migrants trying to reach the English coast.
The court described the tragedy as caused by "individuals driven by greed, with utter disregard for human life".
(FRANCE 24 with AP and AFP)
