Barnier urges France to rip up border treaty in new Channel clash

MICHEL BARNIER has urged France to tear up its migrant treaty with Britain in a dramatic escalation of the war of words between the two countries.

UK Government sources accused the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, who is running in next year’s French Presidential election, of playing politics in threatening to rip up the treaty if he wins.

Mr Barnier also described the open letter Boris Johnson sent to Emmanuel Macron as a ‘provocation’ and said the Prime Minister is in a ‘state of mind of confrontation on all subjects with the European Union’.

Mr Macron accused Mr Johnson of breaking protocol for releasing a letter to the French President setting out the UK’s proposals to the migrant crisis, after 27 people drowned attempting to cross the Channel.

The plans reiterated a call for joint UK-French patrols along French beaches, which Paris has resisted. In a fit of pique, France also cancelled an invitation to Home Secretary Priti Patel to attend a meeting of European interior ministers in Calais today.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith criticised Mr Macron’s ‘petulant outburst in response to Boris Johnson’s letter’. Speaking to the Mail on Sunday, the former Tory leader said the French President has acted ‘like an angry five year old’ over the letter. In comments reported yesterday, Mr

Barnier said he wants France to pull out of 2003’s Treaty of Touquet, which makes Britain responsible for funding and running security at its border sites in northern France. In return, it is up to France to stop migrants trying to enter the UK illegally. A UK Government source said: ‘Every French candidate, in every election, says they want to tear up the treaty.’

France argues that the treaty leads to migrants gathering in camps in France as they try to enter the UK. The source said advocates for ripping up the treaty want to make it easier for undocumented migrants to enter Britain.

Sir Bernard Jenkin, the senior Eurosceptic Conservative MP, last night called for de-escalating tensions between Britain and France.

He said: ‘Everybody should calm down and think about the lives being exploited by the people traffickers and how to tackle that jointly.’ Home Office Minister Damian Hinds also attempted to calm the diplomatic row, saying relations between France and the UK are ‘strong’.

But French government spokesman Gabriel Attal rejected Mr Johnson’s proposals as ‘clearly not what we need to solve this problem’ adding that the decision to post the letter on Twitter suggested the Prime Minister was ‘not serious’.

Home Office data shows more than 37,500 asylum claims were made in the UK in the year to September, the highest for nearly 20 years.

Meanwhile, a union representing Border Force staff has joined a legal fight to prevent boats carrying migrants from being turned away from Britain’s shores.

The Public and Commercial Services Union opposes plans to make Border Force staff stop boats reaching this country. The union said if the Government refuses to abandon the policy, it could launch judicial review proceedings.

He described the PM’s letter as a ‘provocation’