LONDON: Five European countries including the UK, France and Germany agreed on Tuesday to jointly step up the fight against people-trafficking, as London and Berlin signed a bilateral commitment to tackle the gangs.
France’s Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, the Netherlands’ migration minister Marjolein Faber, and Belgium’s migration minister Nicole de Moor and Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden, all joined UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Britain’s border security commander Martin Hewitt for Tuesday’s meeting in London.
Ex-police chief Hewitt was appointed by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in September to help deliver on his pre-election pledge to “smash” the people smuggling gangs.
A growing issue among European nations, rising irregular migration was also one of the main themes that dominated the UK’s July election which swept Starmer’s Labour Party to power.
So far this year nearly 34,000 undocumented migrants have reached British shores across the English Channel, arriving on dangerous, flimsy vessels. At least 70 people have died, making 2024 the deadliest year on record.
Berlin’s interior ministry told AFP that under the bilateral agreement with the UK, signed on Monday, it will look at “clarifying” the law surrounding activities carried out in Germany in preparation for smuggling people across the Channel.
“This will give German prosecutors more tools to tackle the supply and storage of dangerous small boats equipment and allow the UK and Germany to better counter the continually evolving tactics of people smuggling gangs,” said the UK interior ministry.
Net legal migration to the UK is also running at historically high levels, estimated at 728,000 for the year to June 2024, while the toppling of president Bashar Assad threatens a period of instability in Syria that smuggling gangs could look to exploit.
Germany’s ambassador to London, Miguel Berger, said many of the people-smuggling networks bringing people from Belarus through Poland to Germany were also sending migrants across the Channel.
He said that as a result of Brexit, the UK had withdrawn from EU accords on third-country immigration and the London-Berlin agreement would “see how we can again strengthen our cooperation.”
Germany’s Faeser said the two countries were focused on ending “the inhumane activities of criminal migrant smuggling organizations.”
“By cramming people into inflatable boats under threats of violence and sending them across the Channel, these organizations put human lives at risk.”
Many of the crossings were “planned in Germany” and the deal would help to counter “this unscrupulous business with even more resolve,” she added.
The European ministers’ talks in London were part of the so-called Calais Group.
The ministers agreed to coordinate efforts to deter would-be migrants from paying smugglers, strengthen law enforcement cooperation and disrupt gangs from using illicit finance schemes, according to a list of priorities published by the UK government.
They also pledged to tackle gangs’ use of social media to advertise their services and to explore how information can be shared to “enhance operational and technical cooperation.”
Representatives of the European Commission and the Frontex and Europol agencies also participated in the talks.
Britain’s Starmer called in November for greater international cooperation against smuggling networks, which he described as a “global security threat similar to terrorism.”