LOON PLAGE: Britain and France on Thursday signed a new three-year deal to stop undocumented migrants making the risky journey across the Channel in small boats.

Under the deal, France pledged to increase law enforcement personnel on the coast by more than half - reaching 1,400 officers by 2029.

Besides the step-up in law enforcement on the beaches, France is also looking to deploy drones, helicopters and digital resources to prevent crossings, the roadmap said.

Britain will in return provide up to €766 million in funding, though nearly a quarter of that, around €186m, is conditional on the measures being effective.

The cross-Channel neighbours have wrangled for months over renewing the Sandhurst treaty, which sets out the UK’s financial contribution to French efforts to stop migrants attempting the perilous sea crossing to Britain.

London to provide €766 million after Paris agrees to step up enforcement

The UK has accused France of doing too little to prevent would-be asylum seekers from setting off from French shores, with smugglers and migrants taking ever-greater risks to avoid detection.

As a result, London insisted it would only renew the Sandhurst treaty ­— first signed in 2018, extended in 2023 and set to expire this year — if it could impose conditions on how some of its money is used by the French government.

“We will now have flexibility to fund things that we know are working,” UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said Thursday, during a visit to northern France, where she inked the deal with her French counterpart.

According to a French interior ministry document on the accord, if the new measures do not deliver “sufficient results, based on a joint annual assessment, the funding will be redirected to new actions”.

French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the agreement was key for “combating” and “eradicating” illegal immigration networks.

Even if the conditional portion is not paid, the UK’s core contribution of €580 million still represents a €40m hike on what it paid under the last treaty.

The deal’s renewal comes at a crunch time for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who faces political pressure to curb immigration.

At least 29 migrants died at sea in the Channel last year, according to an AFP tally based on official French and British sources.

According to official British figures, 41,472 people reached the United Kingdom illegally in small boats in 2025, the second-highest figure since large-scale crossings were first detected in 2018.

By the terms of the international law of the sea, once a boat has set off from shore, the authorities can only intervene to save people from drowning.

France claims that, since the beginning of the year, arrivals to the United Kingdom have halved compared with the same period last year.

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2026