Reuters
[Source: Reuters]
France and Britain are discussing ending their “one in, one out” Channel migration deal, a French interior ministry source said, with Paris unwilling to extend a pilot scheme due to expire on Thursday.
The agreement, announced last year in a bid to curb small-boat crossings of the English Channel, allowed Britain to return undocumented migrants arriving by small boats to France in exchange for taking an equal number of asylum seekers with family links in Britain.
“We are discussing the terms of withdrawal from the agreement with the British,” the source said.
France’s interior ministry declined to comment on why Paris wanted to wind down the scheme.
The British Home Office (interior ministry) said in an emailed statement that, although it was “no longer processing new cases” under the pilot, it continued to work with France to tackle small-boat crossings and would return migrants to France in the coming weeks.
It said it had established a new task force to curb illegal crossings.
“Numbers (of crossings) are significantly down … this summer (they) were the lowest in six years”, a spokesperson said.
Appearing before parliament in June, French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said Britain remained an attractive destination for undocumented migrants because they could easily find work there.
He also said France wanted to focus on “a more European approach to combating illegal migration.”
“France cannot be expected to bear sole responsibility for controlling an EU external border whose irregular crossings are primarily explained by shortcomings in controls by countries of first entry and by secondary movements within the Schengen area,” he told French lawmakers.
Nunez said 951 people had been returned to France under the “one in, one out” scheme, while 935 people had been granted legal entry to Britain.
According to British interior ministry data, the number of migrants who successfully crossed the Channel in 2026 was down more than 40% by late September from the same period a year earlier.
