The deal will significantly increase the 200 French officers and volunteers operating on the English Channel beaches and France will seek to prevent a “much larger” proportion of migrants from leaving, the Telegraph newspaper reported. France will agree to a joint control center where British immigration officials will be stationed, it said. On Friday, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverley and his French counterpart Catherine Colonnade issued a statement stressing the “urgent need to tackle all forms of illegal immigration”. British officials said a deal was close. British and French government officials declined to comment on the reports on Saturday. The Express newspaper reported that a deal could be signed next week and would likely include more British drones to spot migrants hiding in sand dunes before they attempt the dangerous crossings often in flimsy dinghies. So far this year, around 40,000 people have crossed the Channel in small boats, up from 28,526 last year, putting pressure on Britain’s new prime minister Rishi Sunak to find a way to slow the flow. Separately, four southern European states protested on Saturday that they were being forced to bear the brunt of migrants crossing the Mediterranean and called for changes in European Union policy. Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Malta said in a joint statement that it was unfair to be expected to host people rescued by charity ships as they tried to cross Africa and responsibility should be shared more widely across the bloc. . Private charity ships often defy agreed international rules, the countries’ interior and immigration ministers said, calling for a “serious debate on how to better coordinate these (rescue) operations in the Mediterranean”. The statement follows a bitter row between the Italian and French governments, which came to a head on Friday when a charity ship carrying around 230 migrants docked in the southern French port of Toulon after Italy turned it away. The four countries said the states whose flag the rescue ships fly should take full legal responsibility for the ships. Reporting by William Schomberg in London and Gavin Jones in Rome, additional reporting by John Irish in Paris Editing by Ros Russell Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
