Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart said on BFM TV she was relieved by the decision by the administrative court in the regional capital, Lille.
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“It is an issue of keeping order”.
Most all migrants in the camp want to sneak to Britain by ferry or the Eurotunnel rail service.
Faced with yet another buildup of migrants caused by border restrictions in central Europe, police in Greece removed hundreds of Afghans from its border with Macedonia Tuesday after their route into Europe was blocked.
“(We) have concerns about this approach, and will raise the matter with the relevant countries”, the EU’s executive arm said in a statement.
Athens says it is shouldering a disproportionate burden in what is essentially a European refugee crisis even as other EU countries have been painfully slow to fulfill pledges to accept asylum-seekers for relocation.
“Sherlock” star Benedict Cumberbatch, Jemima Khan, Steve Coogan, and Richard Curtis who also signed the petition, requested to postpone the demolition until the French authorities were allowed to protect the child refugees or they will be permitted to enter into the UK.
Up to a million migrants have fled fighting in Syria and Iraq and there are thought to be around 5,000 in the Jungle camp including more than 600 children, with 400 of them unaccompanied. That is ratcheting up the pressure on Greece, where most of the migrants arrive in Europe, since many Afghanis are getting stuck at its border with Macedonia.
At the weekend actor Jude Law and singer Tom Odell were among famous faces who took to the stage at the camp in Calais to raise the plight of refugees.
“At times there are double the number of people than places available at the camp, so the conditions can become very hard”, Xanthippe Soupli, municipal director at the border town of Idomeni, told state-run ERT television.
Emotions were running high on Tuesday as a deadline loomed for the destruction of half the “Jungle” migrant camp in the northern French port city of Calais.
But Leggeri said “practically nearly no migrants can be returned to Turkey”.
The International Organization for Migration says more than 102,500 people crossed into Greece and more than 7,500 to Italy through Monday.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said in a statement the migrants’ return was important for the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
For numerous approximately 4,000 people in the Jungle, getting past the miles of razor-topped fencing near the ports to reach Britain is their ultimate goal.
French authorities wanted to evacuate part of the Calais camp, known as the Jungle, where at least 3,700 people live, by Tuesday evening.
“We have informed the European Commission that we will temporarily depart from Schengen rules”, Interior Minister Jan Jambon told a press conference in Brussels, referring to the 26-country borderless zone.
There was no immediate reaction from the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm.
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Calaisians have mostly learned to live with migrants in their midst.
