UK and Germany sign deal against people smugglers as Europe struggles to halt Channel crossings
LONDON (AP) — The U.K. and Germany pledged Tuesday to share intelligence and expertise against the people-smuggling gangs that send migrants across the English Channel in small boats, the latest effort by European countries to stop the dangerous journeys.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and her German counterpart, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, signed a “joint action plan” at a meeting in London. The U.K. said that under the deal, Germany will make it a specific offense to facilitate the smuggling of migrants to the U.K. Many of the rubber dinghies used to ferry migrants across the Channel are stored in Germany.
“The criminal gangs who organize dangerous small boats across the channel that undermine our border security, that put lives at risk, are also the same gangs that are operating in Germany, that are operating right across Europe and beyond,” Cooper said. “Law enforcement needs to operate across borders as well.”
Faeser said that the cooperation would include “maintaining a high investigative pressure, exchanging information between our security authorities as best as possible, and persistently investigating financial flows to identify the criminals operating behind the scenes.”
The two countries said they would also work to remove migrant-smuggling content from social media platforms, where many of the smuggling gangs tout their services.
The two ministers signed the agreement before a meeting in London of the “Calais Group” of the U.K., Germany, Belgium, France and the Netherlands, along with the European Union’s police and border agencies, Europol and Frontex.
The United Kingdom's center-left government is trying to rebuild its law enforcement and intelligence ties with the U.K.'s neighbors after the country’s exit from the EU in 2020. Brexit complicated international cooperation by taking the U.K. out of Europol and the bloc’s intelligence-sharing mechanism.
Despite French and U.K. efforts to stop it, the cross-Channel route remains a major smuggling corridor for people fleeing conflict or poverty. Many migrants favor the U.K. for reasons of language, family ties or perceived easier access to asylum and work.
More than 31,000 migrants have made the perilous crossing of one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes so far this year, more than in all of 2023, though fewer than in 2022. More than 70 people have perished in the attempts this year, according to U.K. officials, making 2024 the deadliest since the number of channel crossings began surging in 2018.
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