United Kingdom

In the well-heeled village of Widdington in rural Essex in eastern England, the residents are in a state of inner turmoil. Like the rest of the country this small community is pondering the issue of Brexit – which now faces a new deadline of the end of October 2019 – with passionate, engaging and ultimately irreconcilable arguments. Antoine Perraud reports.

Each year many Vietnamese migrants arrive in France after trekking across Europe in their long and arduous bid to get to the United Kingdom. For hundreds of them the last stop before their attempt to cross the English Channel is a discreet camp at Angres one hundred kilometres from the Port of Calais and which is known locally as 'Vietnam City'. The camp is controlled by traffickers, who are fiercely protective of their 'prime location' next to the main motorway to the Channel and next to a service station where UK-bound lorries park. But as Elisa Perrigueur reports, even if the Vietnamese migrants do make it to Britain, many will find themselves working as modern day slaves on illegal cannabis farms.

The recent arrest of a French citizen accused of a murderous attack at a Jewish museum in Belgium has highlighted the growing problem of jihadists returning from Syria to wage war in their own countries. More than 2,000 European citizens, including 630 French residents, have gone to fight against the Assad regime since 2011, according to recent figures. And some, at least, of those who return come back intending to use their combat training to carry out terrorists attacks at home. As Louise Fessard reports, the numbers involved are so great that European security forces, including those in France, are struggling to cope.