Alain
Juppé calls for UK border to move from Calais to Kent
Exclusive:
French presidential frontrunner says France should not be managing
migrants on UK’s behalf and urges overhaul of Le Touquet agreement
Angelique Chrisafis
in Paris
Thursday 20 October
2016 22.00 BST
France must push
back its border with Britain from Calais to the Kent coast and stop
managing refugees and migrants for the UK, Alain Juppé has told the
Guardian.
Juppé, 71, the
current favourite to become the next French president, said he wants
a complete renegotiation of the Le Touquet accord, the deal between
France and Britain that keeps border checks, and thousands of
refugees and migrants, on the French side of the Channel.
“We can’t
tolerate what is going on in Calais, the image is disastrous for our
country and there are also extremely serious economic and security
consequences for the people of Calais,” Juppé said in an interview
in Paris with the Guardian and a handful of European newspapers.
“So the first
thing is to denounce the Le Touquet accords. We cannot accept making
the selection on French territory of people that Britain does or
doesn’t want. It’s up to Britain to do that job.”
Juppé said he was
not afraid of Britain’s strong opposition to changing the accord.
Asked whether the
border should be pushed back to the English coast, he replied: “Of
course. Don’t tell me that it’s difficult because the British
don’t want it.
“If we entered
international negotiations in that spirit, there would never be any
negotiations. So the debate must be opened and a new accord obtained
with Britain.”
He said France “must
say no to a certain number of things” on the international stage,
notably Le Touquet.
Under the bilateral
treaty signed in 2003, British officials can check passports in
France and vice versa, meaning the English border is effectively in
France and migrants and refugees trying to reach the UK are stuck in
a no-man’s land at makeshift camps in Calais and along France’s
northern coast.
Juppé’s comments
come as attention on the situation in Calais has increased in the
run-up to the 2017 French presidential election. Under political
pressure, in a few days France’s Socialist government will begin
demolishing the main migrant and refugee camp in Calais, where
thousands sleep rough, many trying to reach Britain by stowing away
on trucks heading across the Channel.
The pace at which
children are transferred to Britain from the camp increased this week
after Paris demanded that London show more solidarity with minors who
make the perilous journey to Europe alone, in the hope of joining
relatives in the UK.
On the question of
Britain’s vote to leave the EU, Juppé felt that France must be
firm and clear. “You have chosen and we respect your choice. Now it
must be put into action quickly,” he said.
He warned that the
UK could not be both “outside and inside” the EU. “It’s not
about punishing Britain, it’s about being coherent,” he said,
stressing that France would keep “very close bilateral cooperation
with the UK”, particularly on military and defence issues.
Juppé said he
wanted to restore France’s influence on the international stage,
fearing that the nation was no longer “audible”, partly because
it had not been able to reform itself structurally and economically.
He has promised
pro-business changes and public spending cuts as a response to
France’s sluggish economy and mass unemployment. Juppé argued that
tackling the pensions shortfall and loosening labour market rules
would help France regain credibility and put it on a more equal
footing with Germany, its key European partner.
Juppé, who was
prime minister under Jacques Chirac in 1995 and is currently mayor of
Bordeaux, is the frontrunner for the Les Républicains party
presidential nomination, ahead of the former president Nicolas
Sarkozy. It is the first time the French right has held an open
primary race to choose its candidate, making the turnout and result
hard to predict.
The presidential
election, only six months away, is more open than any previously. The
Socialist François Hollande, France’s least popular president
since the second world war, will announce in December whether he will
attempt a re-election campaign that some fear would already be
doomed. The far-right Front National’s Marine Le Pen is tipped to
easily make it through to the final runoff.
Juppé has undergone
a profound image transformation to become France’s most popular
politician, perceived as a trusted elder statesman preaching a
moderate, centrist message of social harmony in a rising tide of
national identity politics on the right.
Twenty-one years
ago, he was the most loathed French prime minister in modern times
after 2 million people took to the streets in protest against his
pension changes. In 2004, he received a 14-month suspended sentence
and was barred from holding elected office for a year over a corrupt
1980s scheme that illegally put workers for Jacques Chirac’s party
on the payroll of the Paris town hall.
However, the
conviction has not so far come back to haunt him. It is accepted that
he did not profit personally and instead he is seen as having taken
the flak for Chirac.
At his campaign
headquarters on Paris’s left bank, he stuck by his promise to lead
a diverse France that could live together harmoniously. He said his
concept of “happy national identity” was clearly not the current
reality in France, but a collective aim.
“I’m not so
naive as to think that France is swimming in happiness – France
today is in great difficulty. Economically our unemployment is still
very high, particularly among young people, and politically the
current leadership has lost all credibility,” he said. “But the
role of a politician is not to bring a message of pessimism and
decline, but to share confidence and optimism.”
Juppé’s take on
positive French community relations is an attack on Sarkozy’s
hardline brand of national identity politics, focused on immigration
and Islam, which has dominated the headlines. During the summer row
over banning burkinis on beaches, rightwing commentators suggested
that France’s divided society could descend into “civil war”,
with terrorist attacks having killed more than 230 people in little
more than 18 months.
On terrorism, Juppé
said: “We have to improve our intelligence services, which have
been weakened in the past.” He said this included restoring
community policing posts and tougher sentencing in court.
He warned against
talk of “a war of civilisations,” saying: “We mustn’t stoke,
we mustn’t fall into hysteria. Let’s keep our calm. All studies
show that the majority of French Muslims are totally prepared to
respect the laws of the republic.”
Muslims in France
must organise to combat radicalism and stand together to say that
French secularism, the strict separation of church and state,
intended to foster equality for all private beliefs, takes precedence
in France, he said.
Juppé maintained
his criticism of burkini bans and brushed aside suggestions of any
new laws on the Muslim headscarf, which Sarkozy had proposed banning
from universities.
“The headscarf is
not radical Islamism,” Juppé said. “Look around the pavements at
all the women wearing headscarves. We’re not going to ban all women
from wearing a headscarf! You can’t decree laws that can’t be
respected.”
Of the ceremony to
commemorate the victims of the Nice terrorist attack, in which 86
people were killed when a lorry driver ploughed into crowds
celebrating Bastille Day, he said: “We saw families that were
Christian, Muslim, of every faith and origin. And those people told
us that dialogue and the will to stand together could fight
unhappiness, hatred and antagonism.”
Asked whether he
thought France was impossible to reform economically, he said: “Every
country is hard to reform. France maybe more than others, I admit,
but it’s also moving, our universities have transformed themselves,
lots of sectors of public life have been transformed.”
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