Why can't French police go into the Channel to arrest migrants?

Times

3 days ago

The images have become all too familiar. On Saturday, French police stood on the shore watching as dozens of migrants, including young children, crammed on to a dinghy a few hundred metres off the coast.
It has happened often, and in some cases migrants have drowned in front of the watching gendarmes.
While it appears unfathomable, the refusal of the police to intervene is ultimately a matter of French rules. The UK is pushing for those rules to change.
Why don't the French police stop more boats?
The French insist there areboth legal and practical constraints. Once a boat is afloat in the water, it is not within the powers of the gendarmerie to intercept it and bring it back to shore, even if it is safe to do so.
In February the French interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, said he wanted to give the gendarmerie new powers that would allow them to intercept boats within 300m of the coast. 'We need to rethink our approach so that we can intercept the boats. They [the gendarmerie] must be able to intervene in shallow waters,' he said.
Retailleau also said he hoped to restore the offence of an 'illegal stay' in France, which would allow police to arrest migrants and smugglers before they attempt a crossing. At present, migrants who are only considered to have committed an offence when they launch the boat.
More than three months on, neither of these changes have occurred.
The Home Office said at the weekend that it was still 'urging the French to make the necessary changes to their operational policy so their maritime forces can intervene in shallow waters as soon as possible'. The French have instead begun a review into 'new operational tactics', although it is unclear what the outcome will be.
One of the concerns is said to centre around whether gendarmes should wear body armour in the water. Another is what French officers, who routinely carry guns, should to do protect them while in the sea.
Why don't the French disable the boats before they launch?
Two years ago the French began a new policy, at the behest of the British, of disabling boats before launch. This was done by slashing the rubber inflatables.
But this prompted the traffickers to change their tactics, launching from inland waterways then sailing into shallow waters off Channel beaches, where they pick up migrants who wade out to meet the vessel.
Because the boats were already in the water, police could not intercept or disable them. This new tactic is understood to be partly to blame for the fall in the number of boats being intercepted by France, from 47 per cent in 2023 to just over 38 per cent so far this year.
What other issues are there?
Manpower. In 2023, the UK agreed to pay France almost £500 million over three years for extra officers to join the effort.
The French have 1,200 security personnel who can be deployed each day on coastal smuggler operations. Some 730 of them are paid for by the British. But they are still having to operate across 62 miles of coastline and many potential launch points.
Even when police are present, they can face personal danger attempting to stop the boats. Last weekend in Audinghen, west of Calais, two officers were taken to hospital after being pelted with stones thrown by migrants who were boarding two boats.
French police policy is only to intervene if there are enough officers present to safely control the situation. That is why you see pictures of police standing by while boats launch.