After the death of 27 migrants in the English Channel, EU countries want to do more against smugglers. Despite a diplomatic dispute, France and Great Britain emphasize the will to cooperate.
At a crisis meeting on migration across the English Channel, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany agreed to fight smugglers tougher.
Britain, the destination for refugees crossing over in small boats, has been called on to create legal migration routes, said France’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin after the meeting in Calais. In addition, Great Britain must make the illegal employment of refugees more difficult. A few days ago, 27 people died in the English Channel on the way to Great Britain because their boat capsized.
France had removed Britain from the meeting after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for an agreement with France to take back migrants.
“The British are our allies”
Darmanin stressed that he would continue to consult with his British counterpart Priti Patel. “We want to work with the British, the British are our allies.” However, France does not want to be made hostage of British domestic policy, for which migration policy is a hot topic.
Patel also called for cooperation again. “Britain cannot solve this problem on its own, we in Europe must all work harder, take responsibility and work together in the crisis,” she wrote. Otherwise “even worse scenes in the ice-cold water” threatened in the next few months.
Frontex is to monitor the canal coast with aircraft
From the beginning of December, an aircraft from the European border protection agency Frontex will be ready to monitor the Channel coast, said Darmanin. At the same time he emphasized the humanitarian dimension. It does not help to criminalize the refugees, the French police want to save lives with their work on the coast.
At the weekend, the extent of the tragedy was shown once again: The BBC spoke to relatives of one of the women who died in the English Channel. The fiancé of the 24-year-old Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin told the broadcaster that his partner had written to him shortly before her death that her inflatable boat was losing air, but rescue was on the way – in the end, however, any help came too late. The young woman from Iraq wanted to surprise her partner in Great Britain. “When she left Kurdistan, she was very happy, she could hardly believe that she was going to meet her fiancé,” said her best friend, Imann Hassan. “She wanted to live a better life, she chose Great Britain, but she died.”
Source From: Stern
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