(Alliance News) - France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany agreed to take tougher measures against the people smuggling gangs operating in the English Channel at an emergency summit held in the French port of Calais on Sunday.
Britain needed to create legal migration channels for refugees, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said after the meeting. Darmanin added that Britain also needed to make it harder for refugees to find work in the shadow economy.
A few days ago, 27 people attempting to reach Britain died when their boat capsized in the English Channel.
France withdrew its invite for Britain to attend the meeting after a diplomatic row broke out when UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson published a letter he wrote to French President Emmanuel Macron before Macron himself had received it.
Darmanin stressed that he wanted to consult with his UK counterpart Priti Patel. "We want to work with the British, the British are our allies," he said, though he added that France did not want to be held hostage to British domestic politics.
From the beginning of December, the European border protection agency Frontex would provide an aircraft to monitor the coastline of France, Belgium and the Netherlands, Darmanin said.
At the same time, he expressed sympathy for the plight of the refugees and emphasized the humanitarian dimension of the operation on the coast. It did not help to criminalize the refugees, he said, adding that the French police wanted to save lives by preventing the dangerous crossings from happening in the first place.
Patel also called for a return to cooperation between Britain and its neighbours. "The UK cannot tackle this issue alone, and across Europe we all need to step up, take responsibility, and work together in a time of crisis," she wrote on Sunday. Otherwise, she said, there was a threat of "even worse scenes in the freezing water during the coming winter months."
At the weekend, the tragedy's human dimension was revealed when the BBC spoke with relatives of one of the women who died in the English Channel.
The fiance of 24-year-old Maryam Nuri, Mohamed Amin, told the broadcaster that his partner had texted him shortly before her death to say that the inflatable boat she was in was losing air, but that rescue was on the way - in the end, however, help came too late.
The young Iraqi had wanted to surprise her partner in Britain. "When she left Kurdistan she was very happy, she could hardly believe she was going to meet her fiance," her best friend, Imann Hassan, told the BBC. "She wanted to live a better life, she chose Britain, but she died."
source: dpa
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