PARIS (Reuters) -Record illegal migrant crossings across the English Channel this year showed Brexit had failed to deliver on a British promise of tighter border controls, said French President Emmanuel Macron, adding that British people had been ‘sold a lie.’
Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced on Thursday a pilot programme to return migrants arriving in small boats.
Macron added that Britain’s departure from the European Union meant the lack of formal agreements with the EU on migration was actually encouraging people to make those crossings over the Channel.
“The current situation is actually giving an incentive to make the crossing. And this is therefore the exact opposite of what Brexit had proposed and promised,” said Macron on Thursday.
“The thing is, the British people were sold a lie, which was that they were told the problem was Europe but by creating this legal void, the problem has become Brexit.”
Official UK data published earlier this month showed nearly 20,000 asylum seekers had arrived in Britain on small boats so far in 2025, marking a record high for the first six months of the year.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Richard Lough, Peter Graff and Richard Chang)
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