SHARE
COPY LINK

IMMIGRATION

Calais mayor fails in bid to stop anti-migrant wall

The mayor of the northern French port of Calais on Monday made a failed bid to halt construction of a wall aimed at stopping migrants from trying to reach Britain.

Calais mayor fails in bid to stop anti-migrant wall
Work has begun on the so-called "Great Wall of Calais". Photo: AFP

Natacha Bouchart, who pledged on September 23 to use “all legal weapons in my possession” to fight the barrier, filed an injunction to halt work on the wall.

But the local administration immediately overruled the move, allowing the work, which began on September 20, to continue.

The British-funded wall, which will be one kilometre (half a mile) long and four metres (13 feet) high, will pass within a few hundred metres of the sprawling migrant camp known as the “Jungle”, which charities say now houses more than 10,000 people.

The right-wing mayor, who initially favoured a wall, now says there is no need for one because the French government has promised to close down the Jungle camp “as soon as possible”.

Britain is paying the 2.7 million euro ($3 million) cost of the wall, which Calais authorities say will be completed by the end of the year.

It is meant to prevent migrants from reaching a bypass road in order to board trucks heading through the Channel tunnel.

Bouchart told AFP: “Calais residents are fed up with seeing barriers and barbed wire everywhere. They feel completely hemmed in.”

IMMIGRATION

France ‘will not welcome migrants’ from Lampedusa: interior minister

France "will not welcome migrants" from the island, Gérald Darmanin has insisted

France 'will not welcome migrants' from Lampedusa: interior minister

France will not welcome any migrants coming from Italy’s Lampedusa, interior minister Gérald Darmanin has said after the Mediterranean island saw record numbers of arrivals.

Some 8,500 people arrived on Lampedusa on 199 boats between Monday and Wednesday last week, according to the UN’s International Organisation for
Migration, prompting European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to travel there Sunday to announce an emergency action plan.

According to Darmanin, Paris told Italy it was “ready to help them return people to countries with which we have good diplomatic relations”, giving the
example of Ivory Coast and Senegal.

But France “will not welcome migrants” from the island, he said, speaking on French television on Tuesday evening.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has called on Italy’s EU partners to share more of the responsibility.

The recent arrivals on Lampedusa equal more than the whole population of the tiny Italian island.

The mass movement has stoked the immigration debate in France, where political parties in the country’s hung parliament are wrangling over a draft law governing new arrivals.

France is expected to face a call from Pope Francis for greater tolerance towards migrants later this week during a high-profile visit to Mediterranean city Marseille, where the pontiff will meet President Emmanuel Macron and celebrate mass before tens of thousands in a stadium.

SHOW COMMENTS