French government says British exit from European Union will not lead to changes in treaties concerning refugees and migrants

The French deal with Britain that keeps border checks, and thousands of refugees and migrants, on the French side of the Channel will remain in place and won’t be affected by the Brexit vote, the Paris government has said.



Under a bilateral treaty signed in 2003 known as the Le Touquet accord, British officials can check passports in France and vice-versa. This means the English border is effectively pushed back to France and migrants and refugees trying to reach Britain remain stuck in a no-man’s land at make-shift camps in Calais and on France’s northern coast.

The French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, dismissed outright calls from politicians on the French right for a post-Brexit renegotiation of the Le Touquet accord that could push the border back to the Kent coast. “Would that also mean putting in place boats for people who otherwise risk drowning? I think we should be serious,” he said in a TV interview.

“On the question of immigration, to be clear, British exit from the European Union will not lead to changes in terms of immigration treaties with United Kingdom ... These are bilateral treaties,” said the government spokesman and agriculture minister, Stéphane Le Foll.



Since the Brexit vote, the French government has stressed that there would be no change to the border deal with Britain. Because the Le Touquet accord is between France and Britain directly, and not linked to the European Union, there is no automatic need to renegotiate the deal.

Before the UK voted to leave the EU, the French economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, had suggested that if Brexit happened, France could pull out of the accord and “migrants will no longer be in Calais”, suggesting the border could be pushed back to the English coast. His comments were swiftly dismissed by the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, who said the accord would not change.

But while the French government said there would be no change, there were signs that politicians on the right wanted to use the Brexit result to push for a renewed debate on the deal that has left thousands of migrants and refugees stuck at Calais in insalubrious and dangerous conditions in shanty camps.

After the Brexit result was announced, Natacha Bouchart, the right’s mayor of Calais told French broadcaster BFM TV: “The British must take on the consequences of their choice.” She said France would be in “a strong position” after Brexit to review the accord.



Xavier Bertrand, the right’s leader of the Hauts-de-France region, which includes Calais, tweeted: “The English wanted to take back their freedom, they must take back their border.”

François Gemenne, a political sciences professor at Paris’s Sciences Po university, told AFP that once the UK was no longer in the EU “there is no reason for the border to still be at Calais”. He added: “The paradox is that, while the Brexit vote was in the majority an anti-immigration vote, Britain could find itself obliged to take more migrants in the future because it could no longer send asylum-seekers back to the first European country that had registered them, under the European Union’s Dublin regulations.”

Henri Labayle, a migration specialist at the University of Pau, said up until now the UK could claim it showed “a certain European solidarity”, but that was no longer possible. He said the current deal was “politically costly” in France because “populist parties are feeding off this situation”.

The French government stressed that other bilateral immigration treaties with Britain would also remain in place.

The foreign minister said additional important agreements between France and Britain such as the 2010 Lancaster House defence and security treaties would also be maintained.

Cazeneuve has repeatedly said that changing the British-French immigration deal would not be in French interests. He warned earlier this year that a change to the deal would send a signal to traffickers and smugglers that they could legitimately leave people at the French border to cross to England and would lead to tens of thousands more migrants in northern France.