At least 27 people died on November 24 in the worst tragedy that occurred in the English Channel: only two people survived the shipwreck, but very little is known about them. The boat sank off Calais, among the dead were 17 men, seven women and three children, one of the women was pregnant. But the dead have not yet been identified, although an investigation has been opened. According to initial reports, most of the dead were Iraqi, Iranian or Afghan Kurds. They had probably arrived in France via the Balkan route.
Not much is known about the dynamics of the incident that caused the death of the twenty-seven people, who probably left from the Grande-Synthe refugee camp in France, which was cleared only a few weeks ago by the French authorities. The route from Calais to Dover opened in 2018, when it became nearly impossible for migrants to get to the UK by jumping onto trucks before they enter the underground tunnel connecting the two countries. Thus in 2021 the number of people who crossed the Channel by sea aboard makeshift boats tripled compared to the previous year.
The increase is in line with that of flows on all migration routes, after the end of the restrictions due to covid-19, but is also due to the difficulties, after Brexit, to reach the United Kingdom legally, for example through family reunification. The situation is aggravated by tensions between the French and British governments, both concerned more with domestic political issues than with finding a solution that avoids further deaths at sea.
France and the UK had reached a cooperation agreement for maritime border control in July 2021, which provided for € 62 million from London to support Paris in militarization and border control. But the British have not paid the funds they promised, and both the French and British governments seem more concerned about domestic political issues.
No cooperation
French President Emmanuel Macron, who is already in the electoral campaign for the presidential elections in April 2022, is very attentive to the political management of the crisis. Boris Johnson is also focused on the political aspect of the issue: in fact, the anti-European Nigel Farage has already attacked the conservative government, which had promised absolute border control and for which the blocking of immigration was one of the central issues of the program. Many Conservative MPs have called on the government to implement a naval blockade and have proposed that migrants arriving in the UK be sent back to France, a practice that violates international laws on the right to asylum and rescue at sea.
There seems to be no prospect of resolving the issue with dialogue and cooperation between the two countries: on 26 November the French government withdrew the invitation to the British interior minister, Priti Patel, who was to attend a meeting on the situation of migrants in France, on 28 November. The decision was made after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sent a letter to Macron on Twitter, demanding that France bring back all those who try to cross the Channel.
Johnson’s letter arrived earlier on Twitter and in British newspapers than in the hands of the French president. “You don’t communicate stuff like that on Twitter, without warning and without sharing it with us first. These methods surprise us and above all they are not serious ”, accused the French president. And so after the tweet, the French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, wrote to Patel to say that Sunday the meeting will take place without British involvement.
It is only the latest clash between the two countries that have an increasingly complicated relationship: the crisis of migrants is joined by that over fishing rights in the canal. Negotiations between the two countries have been at a standstill for weeks, but on November 26, five French vessels prevented British ferries from entering the port of Calais. Shortly before, other French fishermen had blocked access to their English colleagues in Saint-Malo. The blockade of the Channel Tunnel on the French side and of the port of Ouistreham also began around lunchtime. A diplomatic situation that does not bode well and that threatens to exploit even the deaths of twenty-seven people at sea.
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