Channel migrants crisis needs pan-European response – Andrew Vine

That is the emergence of a new strain of Covid, which has seen countries around the world immediately join forces to assess its potential impact and put measures in place to limit the spread.

Channel crossing policies are not working - Yorkshire Post Letters

The other is illegal immigration, but far from countries working together to deal with it, there is only rancour, finger-pointing and attempts to shift blame.

The shock of last week’s tragedy in the Channel, when 27 people died as their flimsy inflatable boat went down, ought to have put an end to rhetoric over who is responsible for stemming the tide of people attempting to cross one of the world’s busiest sea lanes in winter.

It has not. If anything, it has ramped up the volume of claim and counter-claim, especially between Britain and France, over who is failing to take proper measures. This raises the question of how many more tragedies it will take before national leaders stop trying to score points off each other and focus instead on coming up with answers.

The grim reality is that more tragedies are likely. Fishing vessels on the Kent coast are not putting to sea because the Channel is so dangerous at this time of year, with 15ft waves, ferocious storms and powerful currents.

Yet the overloaded migrant boats completely unsuitable for such conditions continue to launch, and a group of the most economically powerful nations in the world appears powerless to stop them.

As last week’s tragedy shows, the humanitarian reasons for getting a grip on this crisis are at least as compelling as the economic and political ones. Yet even the need to prevent more deaths has not quieted the noisy posturing of leaders, especially Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron, who share an uncanny talent for rubbing each other up the wrong way.

If it was wrong of Mr Johnson to publish the contents of a letter to the French president about methods of combating migration before he had chance to read it, it was equally wrong of Mr Macron to throw a hissy fit and exclude Home Secretary Priti Patel from the meeting of European Ministers in Calais on Sunday to discuss the crisis.

This sort of tit-for-tat point-scoring isn’t going to save lives or solve the problems of migrants massing on the French coast or arriving on Kent’s beaches. It really should be possible for both men to set aside whatever personal acrimony exists between them and work together for the common good of both their countries. If there is some sort of mutual lingering bitterness over Brexit, then it is high time for the Prime Minister and president to put it in the past, where it belongs. The arguments over Britain leaving the EU belong to history, and illegal migration is a crisis of today and tomorrow.

Diplomatic conflict is only perpetuating the paralysis in policy that allows gangs of people-smugglers to make obscene profits from sending migrants to sea – and possibly their deaths. Neither Britain nor France can solve the problem alone, or without the support of the rest of Europe. Nor is it only about the illegal migrant camps on the French coast.

There needs to be a pan-European approach to this crisis, with every country acknowledging it has a part to play. In recent days, the unwitting role of Germany in the journeys of illegal migrants to the Channel coast has come into clearer focus. The country has become a European hub for people-smugglers directing their human cargoes to crossing points, and the German authorities stand accused of doing little, if anything, to tackle the vile trade that is thriving under their noses.

It should surely not be beyond France and Germany – the two most closely- allied and influential countries of the EU – to put together a concerted plan of action to tackle these gangs long before illegal migrants are within sight of Dover’s white cliffs.

Nor should it be beyond Britain to admit that it is not doing enough to address the pull factors that make this country so attractive to illegal migrants. Increasingly, it appears that once somebody has landed on our shores, they are extremely unlikely to be deported. A sclerotic asylum and immigration process sees to that, and the underground economy that has been allowed to flourish means they melt away into the general population, finding work without proof of identity.

Most governments in Europe – ours included – bear their share of responsibility for failing to tackle illegal immigration and clamp down on the criminal gangs who profit from human misery and the hope of a better life. Until each of those governments finds the honesty to admit that, and puts aside petty rivalries in order to join concerted action, there is no real prospect of stopping the boats crossing the Channel – or preventing further tragedies.

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