A Eurotunnel spokeswoman said: “Service managed to run well last night, but there is something in the tunnel which we need to inspect, which is now taking place”.
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Members of the nationalist English Defence League said at the protest that they believed there were enough migrants in the UK already.
“What we are now facing is a global migration crisis”, British Home Secretary Theresa May and French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a joint commentary in the Sunday Telegraph.
The ministers said the addition of 120 police officers and other security measures around the Calais terminal had led to a fall in the number of migrants gaining access to the tunnel.
In it he said that police knew only the number of people caught – more than 400 in the recent five-week period in his county – but that the actual figure was likely to be “a lot higher”.
Both agreed that stopping the flow of migrants was a “top priority” for their respective governments.
Meanwhile, Road Haulage Association chief executive Richard Burnett has invited Prime Minister David Cameron to travel with him across the Channel to see the “appalling conditions” for himself.
The official response to the crisis was yesterday criticised as lacking humanity by Church of England Bishop Trevor Willmott, whose diocese covers the English side of the 30-kilometre sea channel separating the countries.
Dozens of people have lost their lives trying to enter Britain.
“We have grave concerns about the government’s proposals to remove support from some of the most vulnerable families in the UK, many of whom fear there is real risk of serious harm or persecution to them and their children if returned to their countries of origin”, Doyle said.
Mr Johansson was critical of Mr Cameron’s rhetoric: “I hear what he is saying about “illegal immigrants” and “swarms” and I think he is trying to divide people, that that is not a constructive way”.
The British government has pledged a raft of measures, at a cost of £19 million, including extra CCTV at the Eurotunnel site and sending 100 British border guards to boost patrols.
And Cameron, who has warned that the crisis could last all summer, promised “more fencing, more resources, more sniffer dog teams” to aid French police in their nightly cat-and-mouse game with the migrants. “We’ve said all along that this can only be achieved through the deployment of the French military in sufficient numbers to protect the trucks and escort them into the port and/or Eurotunnel”.
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“If he continues not to propose anything else, let’s let the migrants leave and let Mr Cameron handle his politics in his own way, but on his own island”, Bertrand, a former employment minister, told the Journal Du Dimanche.
