Sunday was held in Calais, an emergency European meeting, but without the English.
“It was decided today that from December 1, a European Frontex plane would go day and night to help the French police, the Dutch police, the Belgian police to see the crossings and spot the smugglers,” said the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, on Sunday after the emergency European meeting he had convened on the migration crisis. “It’s a great victory, it took too long, I regret it,” he added.
The ministers in charge of immigration in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as the European Commission, Europol and Frontex, met in Calais to discuss issues of migration and police and judicial cooperation after the death this week of 27 migrants trying to cross the Channel to England. British Home Secretary Priti Patel was excluded from this meeting following the publication on Thursday on Twitter of a letter sent by Boris Johnson to Emmanuel Macron, in which the British Prime Minister proposed in particular that the France takes back all the migrants who arrived illegally in Great Britain.
A “pro-European” meeting
“This meeting was not anti-English, it was pro-European”, defended Gérald Darmanin. In terms of police cooperation, the French minister however acknowledged that there was still a lot of work to improve relations between Great Britain and France. “Our will is to work with Great Britain, but this work can only be done in a serious way and without being held hostage by domestic politics.” And to insist: “The relationship with the British must be a relationship of equals. We are not the British back-up.”
Through Stephan Mayer, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Home Office, Germany also highlighted the necessary work with the United Kingdom: “Great Britain has an important role in to play, we need a post-Dublin agreement between the European Union and Great Britain. ” To be continued for sure.
