Andy Burnham has reportedly pleaded with Emmanuel Macron to renew the agreement, but one government source said France was “on the verge of walking out” of the negotiations. It has now emerged that French Interior Minister Laurent Nunes wants to swap the scheme for a Europe-wide deal under which Britain would send back migrants on small boats in exchange for legitimate asylum seekers from across the bloc.
Mr Nunes told Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood that the current agreement “is not intended to be extended beyond October 1”, insisting on a broader mechanism in the style of the Dublin Agreement, which existed before Britain left the EU, The Telegraph reported.
Mr Nunez told a French parliamentary inquiry in June: “For our part, we want to move away from this bilateral relationship with the UK.
“We believe that France should not solve this problem alone and that it would be better to integrate it into the EU-UK agreement.”
Asked whether a replacement scheme could be launched in October, he said: “There is a roadmap, there is interest, but it would be naive for me to tell you that there will be a mechanism to bridge the gap.”
The pan-European model is reported to be facing resistance from southern European states, which are receiving large numbers of new refugees and asylum applications and fear they will have to accept a disproportionate number of migrants on small boats.
The European Commission also said it would not support the proposal until a compromise was reached.
It comes after the boat, which set off from Cherbourg, some 280 miles from Calais, is believed to have made one of the longest journeys on record before being intercepted off the Hampshire coast.
While total boat crossings during the summer months fell to their lowest level since 2019, smugglers appear to have begun loading more people onto fewer, larger vessels.
The UK government said measures to combat the trend include stationing 45 officers on the beaches of western France in the coming weeks, almost tripling resources in the area.
A Home Office spokesman said: “The Government’s agreement with France has been extended until the autumn. This will ensure that we continue to remove migrants arriving on small boats during the summer.”