‘Do your border checks in UK’ says Calais

‘We must put everything on the table and there must be an element of division, of sharing’.

Xavier Bertrand, the centre-right president of the Hauts-de-France region, had earlier tweeted: “The English wanted to take back their freedom, they must take back their border”.

During the referendum campaign, however, David Cameron suggested the deal could be scrapped, bring the illegal migrant camps from Calais to Kent.

François Gemenne, a political sciences professor at Paris’s Sciences Po university told AFP that once the United Kingdom was no longer in the European Union “there is no reason for the border to still be at Calais”.

“The British people decided, I ask the French government to renegotiate the Touquet agreement”.

But Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve quickly reprimanded Macron for the comment, saying: “We don’t need statements that create buzz on this topic, we need long-term action”.

“They should think before talking rubbish”.

And it allows migrants and refugees seeking to reach Britain to be held back at Calais.

“The migrants have caused many, many problems for us, including insecurity and perception issues”.

Political scientist Francois Gemenne said London was using the Le Touquet accord to “shirk its responsibilities”. The accord is “unfair for France as well as for the migrants”, he said.

Notably, he said, London would no longer be allowed to return asylum seekers to their first European Union port of call under a different accord, the EU’s Dublin agreement.

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. He said the current deal was “politically costly” in France because “populist parties are feeding off this situation”. “It would send a signal to people smugglers and would lead to migrants to flow to Calais in far greater numbers”.

In that case, soon “it will no longer be 6,000 but 20,000” migrants massed in northern France, he warned.

After the Brexit vote, the mayor of Calais Natacha Bouchart said Paris must act to renegotiate the Touquet agreement.