EU sends boats to the English Channel to help tackle 'migration crisis'
French President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Andy Burnham discussed small boat crossings this week during their first bilateral meeting.
The European Union's border agency will send boats to the English Channel and the North Sea to help search for and rescue migrants, officials said on Friday.
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The Frontex agency will send two Spanish boats from September to October, and then one from Lithuania up to January, to join French patrols, authorities managing the area said.
The Channel is one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, and many migrants have died in its strong currents trying to cross from France to Britain.
Human traffickers regularly overload dinghies, leaving them barely afloat.
While the combined total number of boat crossings over the summer months has dropped to its lowest since 2019, smugglers appear to have started loading more people onto fewer, larger vessels.
In August, French coastguards had to rescue 157 people from a boat that caught fire.
Read more: More than 80 people dead on migrant boat adrift off Canary Islands
"In response to the ongoing migration crisis in the Channel, Frontex will deploy patrol vessels to complement temporarily French assets engaged in search and rescue operations," read a statement from the France-based Maritime Prefecture for the Channel and the North Sea.
The UK said in April it would pay France up to £660 million under a three-year border security deal to curb illegal migrant crossings of the Channel, with part of the funding contingent on results.
Last year, both countries agreed a "one in, one out" pilot scheme under which France will accept the return of undocumented people arriving in Britain by small boats, in exchange for Britain agreeing to accept an equal number of legitimate asylum seekers with British family connections.
French President Emmanuel Macron met with UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham this week for their first bilateral meeting.
A boost in the number of police officers confronting the “mega dinghies” carrying migrants from France to Britain was announced ahead of their meeting.
A Downing Street spokeswoman said after the meeting: “The Prime Minister began by thanking President Macron for France’s loan of the Bayeux Tapestry, which he said symbolised common bonds between the UK and France, and was a statement of unity in an increasingly divided world.
“Turning to small boats, the Prime Minister said the co-operation between both countries was clearly working and operational teams were making headway on driving down numbers and reducing crossings.
“It was now vital to ensure that success was scaled up across Europe to deter illegal migration, the leaders agreed."
I said I’d do politics differently. So these are the facts:
— Andy Burnham (@andyburnham) September 3, 2026
The UK has seen the lowest number of summer small boat arrivals since 2020.
We’ve returned more than 80,000 people with no right to be here – and annual returns are at their highest level since 2016.
There are half…
No 10 said measures to counter the trend include deploying a surge team of 45 officers to French western beaches in the coming weeks, almost tripling resources in the area.
Downing Street was asked by reporters if the surge team of an extra 45 officers would be enough to deal with the new, larger dinghies being used for the perilous Channel crossing.
A No 10 spokeswoman told reporters: “That is just one part of our expansive efforts to bear down on criminal gangs, adapting to their latest tactics, and it almost triples French resources in that area.”
She also pointed to the new 75-strong unit focused on curbing crossings, which has begun operations in northern France, taking the total number of officers to nearly 1,050.