The new Home Secretary Amber Rudd met the Interior Minister of France, Bernard Cazeneuve, in Paris on August 30. Counter terrorism, security and migration were their talking points.
As for what the Home Office afterwards termed the ‘migratory pressure in the Calais region and the particularly difficult humanitarian situation’, the UK Government said that it would continue ‘close cooperation to resolve the situation in the Calais region by further securing the ports and tunnel’. Stressing collaboration in a joint statement, the two countries said that they recognised the humanitarian situation in Calais that affects both countries and the need to step up joint efforts to improve the situation in Calais. The ministers agreed to continue their close cooperation in all fields covered in the joint ministerial declaration of August 2015 and investment efforts to protect the shared border.
A UK transport trade body the Road Haulage Association earlier complained that one year after the troubles surrounding thousands of migrants around Calais seeking to reach the UK via ferries or the Channel Tunnel, crisis at Calais has escalated to unprecedented levels of violence and intimidation. The RHA claimed that the safety of UK-bound drivers and the UK economy was at grave risk.
RHA chief executive Richard Burnett called it a totally unacceptable situation. He said: “In July last year we called for the deployment of the French military to assist the authorities in their efforts to secure the Port area but now the latest reports from Calais claim that the police just can’t cope. Despite the partial dismantling of the camp earlier this year, current estimates claim that the number of migrants in the area has doubled in the past 12 months to 9,000.
“These people have travelled vast distances, from mainland Europe and much further afield. But regardless of their country of origin, they all have the same goal – to reach the UK by whatever means possible. And in the vast majority of cases, that means on the back of a truck. Such is their desperation to reach our shores that many fall victim to unscrupulous people-smugglers, and pay them vast sums of money for what they are told will be a ‘guaranteed’ passage across the Channel. They are told that as a result of the UK’s Brexit decision, now is the time to make the crossing. If they wait, the crossing will become impossible. The people-smugglers have no interest in the safety or welfare of those who pay for their services – they are just in it for the money.
“We have seen other serious changes in the past twelve months,” Richard Burnett continued. “When I visited Calais, most migrant action was confined to the hours of darkness. But drivers now face attacks 24/7. We are seeing migrants, in broad daylight, setting fire to trees in the middle of the road, using the flames as protection as they throw missiles – rocks, bricks, even petrol bombs – at innocent drivers. Drivers who are just trying to do their job.
“What other occupation includes running the risk of being threatened with a chainsaw, having a chain tied around your neck, or worse, by increasingly violent migrant hordes? It has now reached the unacceptable stage where these drivers are, quite literally risking their lives each time they approach the port on the last leg home.”
