00:00Now, French police have been stepping up efforts to prevent migrants from crossing the English Channel.
00:05The government in France is giving law enforcement a freer hand after police were filmed slashing the rubber of boats carrying migrants.
00:13Some more on this story we can bring in our French politics editor, Marc Perlman.
00:17Marc, good to see you.
00:18Has France changed its doctrine when it comes to what it can and cannot do?
00:23It is clearly changing, as those images show, because up until now, the police authorities could only intervene if a boat was in dire straits to rescue it.
00:37Now, there's a new proposal being discussed that the authorities could intervene up to 300 meters off the coast, whether or not there is a risk to the people on that boat.
00:53And so this is why you've seen these images of policemen puncturing rubber boats and preventing them from leaving the coast.
01:03Why is that?
01:04Because there's been an influx of people trying to leave.
01:08And also, it's more a scattered departure along the coast in smaller boats called now taxi boats.
01:16And this is why the French authorities are now discussing, in coordination with the British authorities, how to make sure they are much more efficient.
01:26But obviously, this is a much more difficult task because it means intervening more, intervening in more dangerous positions.
01:34The police is not necessarily trained to intervene at sea.
01:39And we know from NGOs, from observers, that most of the casualties happen when the migrants are getting on the boats in a hurry, often in the dark.
01:51And this is where most accidents, most drawings take place.
01:55So this is a change that is being discussed, obviously, not in a vacuum, because there's political pressure, financial pressure from the UK, and also because the French president is about to begin a state visit to the United Kingdom as of tomorrow.
02:11So why are we seeing this pressure from the United Kingdom now?
02:15Well, because obviously, this is a major political issue.
02:19Remember, the previous government had campaigned on stopping the boats.
02:24The current government, Keir Starmer, said, we will fight this as well.
02:30We need to really get tough on this.
02:32We want to see results.
02:34And the statistics are showing that more than 20,000 people have crossed in the first six months.
02:40It's a 50 percent increase from the same period last year.
02:46And this could mean that this year could be a record year.
02:49There's not necessarily more boats, but there are more people because, as I said before, they're using smaller boats.
02:57And there is political pressure.
02:58Why?
02:59Because in the UK, the government is very unpopular.
03:02We're seeing the UK Reform Party rising in the polls.
03:06Why are they rising?
03:07Because they're using this issue of immigration, the fact that the flow cannot be stopped by Britain and by France as political fuel to push their campaign.
03:20And so this is why there's a lot of pressure.
03:22Also here in France, the law and order interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, met his with his British counterpart several months ago.
03:32He said, we need to do much more.
03:33Why do they need to do more?
03:34Because it's a little bit like Turkey and the EU, which reached an agreement several years ago, whereby the EU was paying Turkey to prevent migrants from reaching the EU.
03:46The United Kingdom is paying France and more and more to prevent migrants from coming.
03:52And so on the other side of the channel, the authorities, political, police, and so on are asking, well, what's being done with our money?
04:01Is it working or not?
04:02For now, it seems not to be working.
04:05But obviously, this raises the issue, the humanitarian issue.
04:10What should be done with those migrants?
04:12Will this mean they will take even more risk?
04:14And this would mean more and more deaths trying to cross the channel.
04:18This is going to remain a major, major humanitarian, political, and security issues in the months to come.
