If Britain Leaves E.U., Some Fear France Would Stop Blocking Migrants at Calais

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/world/europe/britain-france-eu-calais-brexit.html

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PARIS — Long before the large-scale migrant crisis began to haunt Europe, the camp at Calais in northern France was the object of political contention and humanitarian indignation.

Now the camp, known as the Jungle and home to thousands of desperate people hoping against all odds to cross the English Channel to Britain, has become an issue in the debate about whether Britain should leave the European Union. Or is it a scarecrow?

Last month, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain used the Calais camp as a crucial part of his argument that voters should vote to stay in the European Union during a referendum in June.

If Britain were to leave, he said, France might abandon a 13-year-old bilateral treaty that, for the purposes of immigration, effectively moved the border with Britain to the French side of the channel.

Last week, President François Hollande chimed in with vague warnings about “the consequences” of a British departure. He mentioned trade and finances but also “people,” namely “immigration.” By that, he meant Calais.

Many experts and politicians, particularly in Britain but also in France, doubt that France would revisit the 2003 treaty of Le Touquet, which shifted the border controls.

They note that it is in France’s interests to control the border on its territory, not only to protect a vital trade route across the channel but also to avoid an even greater flood of migrants huddling on its shores.

That is the stated position of Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who has predicted a “humanitarian disaster” if the border agreement changes.

In Britain, supporters of a departure said the French position was a bluff. “I would say, ‘Donnez-moi un break,’ ” said the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, a member of Mr. Cameron’s party, the Conservatives, who has become one of the leading campaigners for an exit. “There’s absolutely no reason why that treaty should be changed.”

Yet some in France maintain that the Touquet treaty, negotiated by Nicolas Sarkozy, then the French interior minister, and his British counterpart at the time, David Blunkett, is deeply flawed and against the nation’s interest.

Alain Juppé, the mayor of Bordeaux and a leading candidate — against Mr. Sarkozy — for the presidential nomination of France’s main opposition party, called the current situation unsustainable.

“We must negotiate to re-examine the 2003 treaty,” he told La Voix du Nord, a regional newspaper, in January.

Olivier Cahn, a law professor at the Cergy-Pontoise University and an expert on French-British relations, considers the Touquet treaty to be “very disadvantageous” to France.

He said the annual cost of managing both the security and the humanitarian situation at Calais is 80 million euros, or about $88 million. Britain last week increased its contribution to €57 million from €35 million.

More important than the money is the principle, Mr. Cahn said. “France has to receive these people and determine who they are,” he added. “The British just say they are not welcome.”

The number of asylum seekers in Britain dropped to just 32,414 last year, of which 61 percent were initially refused, from about 80,000 in 2003.

A recent British court decision in favor of five migrants at Calais who were seeking to join family members in Britain could open a new path for others, particularly several hundred unaccompanied children, now stranded in France.

“We have done our best to make it as hard as possible,” said Jonathan Portes, a senior fellow at U.K. in a Changing Europe, a research organization.

Still, even in the event of a British departure, Mr. Portes says France is unlikely to challenge the 2003 treaty, a view that he thinks is quietly shared by even pro-European Union policy makers.

“It is scaremongering,” he said, “but this is politics, and it is getting dirty. A lot of things are being said on both sides that are dubious, exaggerated or factually inaccurate.”

Mr. Cahn said France might be seeking to use the issue as leverage for British concessions in other spheres, perhaps cooperation in the fight against terrorism. But, he said, that will not do much to help the migrants stuck in Calais, fenced into one of the most heavily secured corners of France.