On Tuesday asylum seekers were travelling from France on a rubber inflatable dingy and 12 migrants were killed in a boat disaster including a number of children.
The French authorities said most of dead were from African countries such as Eritrea and the French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin blamed the UK.
He blasted that unless there is an asylum agreement with the EU and the UK “we will be condemned to see the small boats continue.”
Darmanin said the capsizing of the boat was a “terrible shipwreck” and he accused the “smugglers” for putting 70 people onto a seven metre long rubber dinghy.
He said, “The solution is… to do a treaty that allows the UK and the EU, not just France and the UK, to create a causal link between asylum requests and the granting of asylum in the UK.
“Otherwise, we will be condemned to see the small boats continue.”
The French Interior Minister said that the migrants cross the English Channel “without papers” and the UK “very rarely” expels the asylum seekers.
Darmanin said: “The Rwanda deal has fallen through and didn’t deter the human traffickers.”
He added, that the “tens of millions of Euros we negotiate every year with our British friends, who only pay a third of what we spend” on policing French beaches.
The Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said that he is open to a new agreement to send illegal migrants from the UK to the EU.
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