According to a report in the French press today, the border between France and the United Kingdom is ‘at risk of being left unprotected’. The cynic might say that’s been the case for years, given the vast numbers of migrants who have crossed the Channel in small boats since 2018. Over 41,000 made the journey in 2025 – the second highest number on record – and more than 4,400 migrants have landed in England in the first three months of this year.
That figure is likely to increase significantly now that spring has arrived. The days are longer and, according to the BBC weather centre, the outlook for April is for ‘drier-than-normal weather’. The peak season for small boat crossings is normally early May to late September, when the weather in the Channel is at its most benign. But the well-organised people smugglers are always ready to capitalise on unseasonably clement conditions.
In March 2023, Britain and France signed a deal in which Paris received £468 million in return for promising to stop the boats. It hasn’t quite gone according to plan. In the three years to 2025, the number of migrants crossing the Channel has risen from 29,000 to 41,472.
There is no political will in Paris to combat mass immigration
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has done the maths and reportedly is demanding that France fulfil its side of the bargain. She wants the French police to intercept more small boats before they can be launched from the coast – what the Home Office has described as demonstrating more ‘flexibility and innovation’.
Apparently Mahmood’s demand for a performance-based deal has irked her French counterparts. The newspaper Le Monde quotes a source with France’s Interior Ministry declaring that ‘the negotiations have failed; everything has gone up to the ministerial level’. There is now concern within the Home Office that the French ‘might just delay things further’ or even take their ‘foot off the gas’ and leave the border unprotected.
But has a French foot ever really been on the gas? President Emmanuel Macron has fobbed off one prime minister after another in the nine years he has been in power.
The first to fall for his patter and promises was Theresa May. She hosted Macron at the Sandhurst summit in January 2018, and told reporters that Britain and France ‘share a determination to tackle the people traffickers and migrant smugglers who exploit the misery of those making the perilous journey to Europe’. Rishi Sunk and Keir Starmer have parroted similar platitudes after meetings with Macron, and yet the small boats keep coming.
Macron believes in free movement. It is why France has experienced record levels of legal and illegal immigration during his presidency. His centrist party is fully on board. Last week, one of the senior figures in his party, Yaël Braun-Pivet (who is also the speaker of the National Assembly) said that a referendum on immigration would be contrary to Republican values. That is not what the vast majority of the public think: 72 per cent would like to have their say on the changing demographics of their country.
Macron’s centrist MEPs in Brussels also toe the Elysee line on free movement. Last week they voted against a bill that will create return hubs outside the EU to where rejected asylum seekers will be sent before deportation. They and their left-wing allies lost the vote, however, and the return hubs will form part of the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum that comes into full effect in June.
This pact has been years in the making but the French media say it ‘risks missing its implementation deadline in France’ because of concern that some of the measures will need to be transposed into French law. In other words, the French government will deploy delaying tactics, just as they are with Britain.
There is no political will in Paris to combat mass immigration, and that won’t change in the final year of Macron’s tenure. He wants to be remembered as a progressive president and not the man who stopped the small boats.
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