Brussels, 03/07/2015(Agence Europe)- In an opinion published on Thursday 2 July, the French National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) makes the case for denouncing the Franco-British agreements governing Calais, which is currently experiencing a major migration crisis, according to the newspaper Le Monde. This independent French administrative body, which has an advisory and propositional role in human rights matters, carried out a mission on the ground and deplores the fact that 3,000 migrants are trapped and being held in conditions it described as “infra-human” (our translation throughout).
Amongst other things, CNCDH denounces the “multiple costs brought about by keeping on French soil migrants wanting to reach Great Britain” and recommends the “immediate denunciation of the so-called Le Touquet and Sangatte agreements”. France and the United Kingdom have concluded a number of bilateral administrative treaties and agreements, to de-localise British border control points to port and railway areas on French soil and to tighten up the security provisions in these (the Sangatte protocol, signed in 1991 and updated in 2000, 2003 and 2007). These texts, however, would end up “making France the 'policing arm' of British migration policy”, according to the consultative body, the newspaper reports.
On Thursday 2 July, the French home affairs minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, met his British opposite number, Theresa May, a minister in David Cameron's Cabinet who took this opportunity to ask France to do more in terms of offering asylum in Calais. CNCDH, on the other hand, criticises the fact that France prevents refugees from submitting an asylum application on the other side of the English Channel, by preventing them from leaving France. “CNCDH sees this as an attack on the very substance of asylum law” and “a disproportionate attack on the fundamental right to leave any country, which is laid down in the European Human Rights Convention”. (Solenn Paulic)