{"id":14831,"date":"2026-05-10T08:21:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T08:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/14831\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T08:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T08:21:10","slug":"migrant-crisis-police-chief-demands-naval-blockade-in-bid-to-stop-small-boat-migrants-surge-from-belgium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/14831\/","title":{"rendered":"Migrant Crisis: Police chief demands ‘naval blockade’ in bid to stop small boat migrants surge from Belgium"},"content":{"rendered":"

A senior Belgian police official has demanded the installation of a naval blockade to intercept migrant vessels before they can reach British shores.<\/p>\n

Christiaan De Ridder, Deputy Chief of West Flanders Police, made the call following a surge in small boat departures from Belgian coastal towns near the French border.<\/p>\n

“We have to stop them before they get to the UK. We have to find a way to stop them on the water,” he told the BBC.<\/p>\n

“If we could put up a naval barrier so they don’t get into French waters, everything would stop.”<\/p>\n

French authorities typically escort dinghies safely towards British waters rather than intercepting them, despite knowing these crossings are illegal and frequently orchestrated by criminal networks.<\/p>\n

This policy has sparked growing anger in Britain, particularly as the UK Government has committed \u00a3660million over three years to France to help reduce crossings.<\/p>\n

People-smuggling networks have reportedly relocated some operations to Belgium<\/a> to circumvent promised increases in French patrols. <\/p>\n

Migrants departing from Belgian beaches are sometimes collected alongside others from isolated stretches of coastline around Dunkirk and Calais.<\/p>\n

\"Migrants\"\/<\/p>\n

Belgian police official, Christiaan De Ridder, has called for a naval blockade to stop migrant crossings to Britain<\/p>\n

| <\/p>\n

GETTY <\/p>\n

Since January, Belgian authorities have detained forty suspected traffickers and more than 360 migrants, with approximately 30 small boat crossings recorded this year. <\/p>\n

Such arrest figures are virtually unprecedented across the border in France.<\/p>\n

The number of illegal migrants crossing the Channel reached a shocking milestone just days ago, with over 200,000 migrants making the journey since records began in 2018<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Images captured at Gravelines beach near Dunkirk showed migrants boarding a vessel with no French officers visible, despite assurances of enhanced patrols in the area.<\/p>\n

\"Migrants\"\/<\/p>\n

Migrant crossings have now reached over 200,000 since records began in 2018 <\/p>\n

| <\/p>\n

GETTY<\/p>\n

Direct intervention by French police remains exceptionally uncommon.<\/p>\n

When officers did take decisive action last week by puncturing a migrant dinghy<\/a> on a beach near Calais, they were subsequently reported to a human rights watchdog.<\/p>\n

In the Belgian resort of Middlekerke, roughly an hour’s drive from Calais, migrants have been observed rushing through streets towards the beach to board waiting boats.<\/p>\n

The Mayor of Dunkirk, Jean Marie Emmery, dismissed the Belgian approach as unnecessary.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, he argued legislative reform was the only viable solution.<\/p>\n

“We don’t need that,” he said. “We need a change of the law. <\/p>\n

“We need a change in Great Britain and in Europe and in Belgium and then it will stop.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior Belgian police official has demanded the installation of a naval blockade to intercept migrant vessels before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,69,115,6437,144,143,142],"class_list":{"0":"post-14831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-belgium","8":"tag-belgium","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-migrant-crisis","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-sgg","14":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116549313176941719","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}