UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have announced tougher migration controls, ending a state visit with deals on defence, nuclear cooperation and plans to support Ukraine in case of a ceasefire.<\/p>\n
After hosting Macron for a three-day visit that included a carriage procession to Windsor Castle with King Charles and a state banquet, Sir Keir was handed a much-desired boost when Mr Macron said France had agreed to a migrant returns scheme.<\/p>\n
Sir Keir, who has seen his popularity slide since winning an election landslide last year, is working to address high levels of immigration, including asylum seekers arriving by small boats across the Channel from France, to try to stem the rise of the populist Reform UK party, led by Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage.<\/p>\n
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By continuing you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n At a joint press conference, the two leaders said they had agreed a \u201cone in, one out\u201d returns scheme – which would include the UK deporting to France undocumented people arriving in small boats, in return for accepting an equal number of legitimate asylum seekers with UK family connections.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m pleased to announce our agreement today on a groundbreaking returns pilot. For the very first time, migrants arriving in small boats will be detained and returned to France in short order,\u201d Sir Keir said, standing alongside Mr Macron.<\/p>\n \u201cThis will show others trying to make the same journey that it will be in vain.\u201d<\/p>\n It was unclear, however, whether the agreement would have a big effect.<\/p>\n A government source said they were looking at about 50 returns a week, or 2600 a year, a fraction of the more than 35,000 arrivals reported by the government last year.<\/p>\n Another source said the scheme could be scaled up.<\/p>\n More than 21,000 people have arrived on small boats so far in 2025, a record number for this stage of the year.<\/p>\n Fabian Hamilton, an MP in Sir Keir\u2019s Labour Party, said he was \u201csceptical that this is the answer\u201d.<\/p>\n The policy, which is similar to a scheme used by the European Union and Turkey, carries risks for Mr Macron from his conservative political critics who may question why he has agreed to take back migrants wanting to live in the UK.<\/p>\n Mr Macron criticised the UK\u2019s decision to leave the European Union, saying \u201ca lot of people in your country explained that Brexit would allow you to fight more efficiently against illegal immigration\u201d but that it resulted in \u201cthe exact opposite\u201d.<\/p>\n He had earlier called on the UK to address \u201cmigration pull factors,\u201d suggesting it should be harder for migrants in the UK to find work without legal residential status.<\/p>\n Sir Keir said the UK\u2019s crackdown on illegal working, which he described as being on a \u201ccompletely unprecedented scale,\u201d would mean the jobs migrants had been promised would no longer exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have announced tougher migration controls, ending a state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,393,299,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-254441","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales","18":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114830963049322206","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}