France will build a new “humanitarian” camp for asylum seekers at Calais this winter with EU aid, the French prime minister Manuel Valls has announced, reports The Independent.
The tented encampment for 1,500 people will replace an existing “jungle” of makeshift shelters in dunes north of the French Channel port. It will be built instead of a township of prefabricated huts which was announced in June but never constructed.
The camp will partially be funded by a grant of €5m from the European Union but this money will also be used to to transport some of the estimated 3,000 asylum seekers in Calais to hostels in other parts of France.
The announcement of the new camp, during a visit to Calais by Mr Valls, will be attacked as a “Sangatte 2” by the anti-migration lobby in Britain. A Red Cross camp for refugees and migrants at Sangatte near the Channel Tunnel entrance was closed in 2002 following pressure from the UK government.
French officials say that the new camp is intended to provide minimum humanitarian facilities for the existing migrants at Calais – not to provide a magnet or spring-board for other migrants to travel to Britain.