Paris withdraws the invitation to London to address the situation at a summit this Sunday after a controversial letter sent by the ‘premier’ to Macron through social networks
The tension between the United Kingdom and France has soared in the wake of the migration crisis in the English Channel after the death on Wednesday of 27 migrants, including women and children, in a shipwreck as they tried to reach the British shores. This Friday the discomfort of Paris towards London became more than evident when the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin withdrew on Friday the invitation that he had made the day before to his counterpart from Great Britain, Priti Patel, to attend this Sunday a European meeting in the northern town of Calais in order to address the situation.
Darmanin canceled the invitation after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson posted on Twitter a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron, proposing five measures to prevent tragedies like Wednesday’s from happening again. The tenant of 10 Downing Street proposed to the head of the Elysee joint patrols to stop illegal immigration and the return to the French territory of all migrants who manage to cross the English Channel from the French coast, among other things.
Macron publicly criticized Johnson on Friday, whose methods, in his view, “are not serious.” “The leaders do not communicate with each other on these issues by tweets or by letters made public,” the French leader made him ugly at a press conference in Rome, where he was on an official visit. Paris recalled that the usual diplomatic channels exist for that. The spokesman for the French Government, Gabriel Attal, for his part called Johnson’s letter “poor in substance and out of place in form.” He also said that they are “fed up” with the “double talk” of the British and their “externalization of problems.”
The Calais meeting holds up despite the UK’s absence. The Interior Ministers of France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, as well as the European Commission, are expected to participate. “The ministers are going to work seriously, with serious people … and then we will see with the British how to proceed, if they decide to be serious,” Macron added.
The migration crisis adds to the already deteriorated relations between London and Paris since the ‘Brexit’, mainly motivated by the fishing conflict. These two issues that can be explosive for Macron five months before the French presidential elections. The French fishermen on Friday blocked the ports of Calais, Saint-Malo and Boulogne-sur-Mer and the access of trucks to the cargo terminal of the tunnel under the English Channel to demand a solution to the access of their boats to the waters British after the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union.
Faced by fishing
London refuses to grant more licenses to French fishermen to fish in British waters. Paris in turn denounces that London does not comply with the post-‘brexit ‘agreement, by which the United Kingdom and the community club agreed to establish a licensing system for the fishing boats of both parties.
The Australian submarine crisis has also torpedoed relations between London and Paris. France felt deceived and ignored by its allies, after the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia announced in September without notifying them before the creation of Aukus, a strategic military alliance between these three countries to share advanced defense technology and counteract advances. of China in the Indo-Pacific area.
As a result of this alliance, Canberra suspended the contract to buy 12 conventionally-powered submarines from France. From there, relations with London cooled even more. And Macron even called his ambassadors in Washington and Canberra for consultations, an unusual gesture among allies with Paris, he wanted to publicly express his discontent over this “stab in the back.”
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