France will press the EU to conclude a migration agreement with Britain

 

 France will put pressure on Brussels to conclude asylum agreements with the United Kingdom and try to prevent illegal migrants from crossing the English Channel, writes The Guardian. The French government, which took over the presidency of the EU Council for six months last week, is calling for decisive action across the bloc, despite warnings that other member states have no plans to conclude a migration agreement with the UK.

 According to a senior French official, the treaty aims to create a single legal framework with the United Kingdom so that people can legally seek asylum in that country. "Obviously this means reciprocity" of the agreement, the source said: it was assumed that British officials would be able to send asylum seekers back to the European countries from which they came. The official notes that Paris will be ready for such cases, and the main goal is to eventually accommodate all migrants.

 It remains unclear whether London will agree to such an offer, writes the British newspaper. During the Brexit negotiations, the government abandoned the treaty that existed during the country's EU membership and allowed asylum seekers to be returned to the EU. For a long time, however, the government did not allow people to apply outside the country, fearing that this would increase the number of false applications.

 EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ilva Johansson, meanwhile, told The Guardian last month that other EU member states were reluctant to sign such an agreement with the United Kingdom over the post-Brexit dispute over the Northern Ireland Protocol. In response, a French source objected that migrants were "a very important issue not only for the French, but for all Europeans". France, Belgium and the Netherlands are "facing a big problem" because thousands of people are flooding those countries trying to reach the United Kingdom, he said.

 As the newspaper reminds, last year the relations between Paris and London were in a deep diplomatic crisis, after 27 migrants drowned in the English Channel in an attempt to reach the United Kingdom. The French government believes that the UK's soft employment legislation is attractive to illegal immigrants. For its part, the British side blames the eurozone without borders for the current situation: last year, Interior Minister Priti Patel said that "the real problem with the flow of illegal migrants is the lack of any protection of borders in the EU."

 The article notes that the agreement reached with the United Kingdom is part of a comprehensive program of action through which France wants to strengthen controls on the free movement of people. President Macron intends to reform the Schengen area without passports and move forward in the adoption of the long-delayed law on the distribution of refugees among the bloc countries, writes The Guardian.