France must push back its border with Britain from Calais to the Kent coast and stop managing refugees and migrants for the UK, Alain Juppé has told The Guardian.
Juppé, 71, the current favourite to become the next French president, said he wants a complete renegotiation of the Le Touquet accord, the deal between France and Britain that keeps border checks, and thousands of refugees and migrants, on the French side of the Channel.
“We can’t tolerate what is going on in Calais, the image is disastrous for our country and there are also extremely serious economic and security consequences for the people of Calais,” Juppé said in an interview in Paris with The Guardian and a handful of European newspapers.
“So the first thing is to denounce the Le Touquet accords. We cannot accept making the selection on French territory of people that Britain does or doesn’t want. It’s up to Britain to do that job.”
Juppé said he was not afraid of Britain’s strong opposition to changing the accord.
Asked whether the border should be pushed back to the English coast, he replied: “Of course. Don’t tell me that it’s difficult because the British don’t want it.
“If we entered international negotiations in that spirit, there would never be any negotiations. So the debate must be opened and a new accord obtained with Britain.”
He said France “must say no to a certain number of things” on the international stage, notably Le Touquet.
Under the bilateral treaty signed in 2003, British officials can check passports in France and vice versa, meaning the English border is effectively in France and migrants and refugees trying to reach the UK are stuck in a no-man’s land at makeshift camps in Calais and along France’s northern coast.
Juppé’s comments come as attention on the situation in Calais has increased in the run-up to the 2017 French presidential election. Under political pressure, in a few days France’s socialist government will begin demolishing the main migrant and refugee camp in Calais, where thousands sleep rough, many trying to reach Britain by stowing away on trucks heading across the Channel.
The pace at which children are transferred to Britain from the camp increased this week after Paris demanded that London show more solidarity with minors who make the perilous journey to Europe alone, in the hope of joining relatives in the UK.
On the question of Britain’s vote to leave the EU, Juppé felt that France must be firm and clear. “You have chosen and we respect your choice. Now it must be put into action quickly,” he said.
He warned that the UK could not be both “outside and inside” the EU. “It’s not about punishing Britain, it’s about being coherent,” he said, stressing that France would keep “very close bilateral cooperation with the UK”, particularly on military and defence issues.
Juppé said he wanted to restore France’s influence on the international stage, fearing that the nation was no longer “audible”, partly because it had not been able to reform itself structurally and economically.
He has promised pro-business changes and public spending cuts as a response to France’s sluggish economy and mass unemployment. Juppé argued that tackling the pensions shortfall and loosening labour market rules would help France regain credibility and put it on a more equal footing with Germany, its key European partner.
Juppé, who was prime minister under Jacques Chirac in 1995 and is currently mayor of Bordeaux, is the frontrunner for the Les Républicains party presidential nomination, ahead of the former president Nicolas Sarkozy. It is the first time the French right has held an open primary race to choose its candidate, making the turnout and result hard to predict.
The presidential election, only six months away, is more open than any previously. The socialist François Hollande, France’s least popular president since the second world war, will announce in December whether he will attempt a re-election campaign that some fear would already be doomed. The far-right Front National’s Marine Le Pen is tipped to easily make it through to the final runoff.
Juppé has undergone a profound image transformation to become France’s most popular politician, perceived as a trusted elder statesman preaching a moderate, centrist message of social harmony in a rising tide of national identity politics on the right.
Twenty-one years ago, he was the most loathed French prime minister in modern times after two million people took to the streets in protest against his pension changes. In 2004, he received a 14-month suspended sentence and was barred from holding elected office for a year over a corrupt 1980s scheme that illegally put workers for Jacques Chirac’s party on the payroll of the Paris town hall.