On Sunday police discovered 17 suspected illegal immigrants hiding in the back of a lorry on the M1.
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However Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, said that it was not possible for the EU to absorb “millions”! more immigrants and called on Brussels to change the law to make it easier to send them home.
“We are now able to disburse the funding for the French national programme and the UK has already received the first disbursement of its funding”, Natasha Berthaud, a European Commission spokeswoman, told a news conference.
He said: “Rather than throwing up the drawbridge and talking about how Europe can “protect” itself from migrants, Mr Hammond should be working with our EU partners to ensure that people don’t drown in the Mediterranean or get crushed beneath lorries at Calais“.
France has deployed more than 100 riot police officers to Calais to bolster security as hundreds of migrants have been trying night after night to rush the railway tunnel leading to England – at times with fatal consequences.
But the government’s increasingly shrill tone on the issue – Cameron was criticised for referring to migrants as “a swarm” – has upset charities, churchmen and left-wing politicians.
‘So long as there are large numbers of pretty desperate migrants marauding around the area there will always be a threat to the [Channel] tunnel’s security, ‘ he said in Singapore. In reality, the migrants at Calais account for as little as 1 per cent of those who have arrived in Europe so far this year.
About 3,000 migrants have been living in and around Calais, majority in a camp known as “the jungle”, a squalid staging point for Afghans, Eritreans, Sudanese and other people who have made their way there in the belief that they can get across the Channel.
Construction will be one of the sectors singled-out for an increased wave of Government raids in a bid to clampdown on illegal migrants.
Officials said the money will help frontline states like Italy and debt-hit Greece – which complained last week it can not cope – build reception centers and integrate migrants.
Heated debate has erupted in France and Britain in current weeks over which nation has the duty to discover a answer to the migrant disaster and the way it must be dealt with.
Immigration has overtaken unemployment and the financial crisis as the number one concern for EU citizens in recent months, according to a study by Eurostat.
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“Experience tells us that employers who are prepared to cheat employment rules are also likely to breach health and safety rules and pay insufficient tax”, he said.
