UK home secretary Amber Rudd is to reject calls for changes to UK-French border control agreements in Calais when she meets her French counterpart on Tuesday.
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She is likely to seek assurances that the French government remains committed to the Le Touquet Agreement between Britain and France which established that border checks are conducted in each other’s country.
Betrand said he wants the treaty revoked.
The spokesman said “local politicians” in France occasionally called for changes to the Le Touquet arrangements, but that the Paris government’s continued support for the agreement was clearly restated last month in talks between Prime Minister Theresa May and President Francois Hollande.
Mr Sarkozy, who hopes to make a comeback in the French presidential election next year, said the controversial “Jungle” migrant camp should be shut down and moved to Britain.
Today’s papers are hyping a meeting tomorrow between Amber Rudd and Bernard Cazeneuve, France’s interior Minister, but there is no suggestion that the French Government is seeking to resile from Le Touqet.
Sarkozy said during a speech over the weekend: “I’m demanding the opening of a centre in Britain to deal with asylum seekers in Britain, so that Britain can do the work that concerns them”.
“We need order at the border”.
In any event, the idea is surely a fantasy: the Government would not allow British border officials to participate in such a plan – which, by the way, has echoes of Donald Trump’s fabled Mexican wall.
Sarkozy, the ex-President of France, is back to the big politic.
“I’m demanding the opening of a centre in the United Kingdom to deal with asylum seekers in Britain so that Britain can do the work that concerns them”, he told a rally.
Migrants, majority from Eritrea, jump into the water from a crowded wooden boat as they are helped by members of an NGO during a rescue operation at the Mediterranean sea, north of Sabratha, Libya, Monday, Aug. 29, 2016.
However, disruption is expected next week when shopkeepers and lorry drivers in Calais said they would block motorways to demand the dismantling of the Jungle camp, whose current population is set to reach 10,000.
“The French government have repeatedly made it clear that removing the juxtaposed controls would not be in the interests of France”, they added.
Britain and France have a close security relationship, including intelligence-sharing, which is of particular importance across the Channel in the wake of the Paris and Nice terrorist attacks.
“What we need to do is work more closely together”.
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He said: “We will not continue to guard the border for Britain if it’s no longer in the European Union”. In July, Calais’ conservative mayor Natacha Bouchart said authorities would soon announce that the remaining half would be dismantled.
