France to hire FERRIES to send Calais migrants to Britain within HOURS of EU Out vote

MIGRANTS living in shanty camps in northern France will be put on ferries and sent to Britain the day after a vote to leave the EU, a French mayor warned last night.

Franck Dhersin said the Touquet agreement, which was signed in 2003 and places the UK border at the French ports, will be quickly torn up after an out vote, allowing the French government to hire DFDS ferries to start the mass exodus immediately.

The ferry company operates from Calais and Dunkirk to Dover.

French gendarmes would be called in to police the vessels when the evacuations begin.

Mr Dhersin, a no-nonsense mayor for a 7,000 strong community at Teteghem, a large suburb of Dunkirk, was last year instrumental in closing a migrant camp in the town where shootings had taken place between rival people-smuggling gangs.

Plans for the mass ferry evacuations have the full backing of Calais mayor Natalie Bouchart and Xavier Bertrand, the recently re-elected powerful president of the Nord-Pasde-Calais-Picardie region.

In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Express, Mr Dhersin said: “We all believe that Britain will vote to leave the EU because of the rise of nationalism, not only in your country, but in other European countries as well.

“Then the Touquet agreement we have at the moment, which puts the UK border in France, will quickly come to an end. Be in no doubt, it will no longer exist.

“The border will move to Dover and so the migrants who come to Calais and other ports and towns in northern France will then be put on DFDS ferries and taken to Dover. This will happen.

“The people of Dunkirk and Calais have had enough. We are the officials and this is what has been decided.”

He added: “I am sure this will happen, so Britain had better start getting ready. In two years time we will no longer have this problem in northern France. This is not a threat or talk, this is how it will be.”

A senior local government official working in northern France said: “We have been closely looking at the treaty with Britain and we think it can be undone quickly.

“We have lived with the issue of migrants for 10 years or more and we are not impressed with the British position so we are planning for an out vote. We think that is likely. We see it as an opportunity to solve this problem and let the British deal with it.”

He added there were no plans to take migrants through the Channel Tunnel if Britain votes to leave.

Damian Collins, Tory MP for Folkestone and Hythe, who has come out in favour of the remain campaign, said: “This just goes to show the serious threat that is posed to our authority to manage our borders in France and the very real prospect that we could lose that power. French politicians are desperate for those powers to go because they can see it keeps migrants on their side of the Channel.”

He added that although Britain could still turn away migrants landing on its shores, he fears for the chaos it would ensue for the country and its relationship with France.

However, the mayor’s threat provoked an angry response from Tory MP Steve Baker, the co-chairman of Conservatives for Britain, who warned: “The British people will not respond well to blackmail. These are hollow threats. Any immigrants brought over on a ferry to the UK illegally would be sent back to France and the ferry companies would be fined. We want to have friendly relations with all European countries after we Vote Leave. All talk of recrimination is counterproductive.”

Dan Hannan, Tory MEP for South East England, agreed, saying: “If French politicians think the British people respond to bullying or threats, they haven’t read our history.”

Although the migrant camp at Teteghem has gone, there is still a large camp with 1,500 migrants at Grand-Synthe, just outside Dunkirk.

Armed French police ring the site, which lies next to an affluent housing development.

Tomorrow French police will move on to the site in force to move some of the migrants into nearby wooden shelters.

If they meet any resistance they will use tear gas.

Mr Dhersin said: “It is better for the families to have wooden homes but this is not a long term plan.”

He said many migrants from Calais and other areas have been moved to empty holiday camps across France.

“The plan is to get them away from the people smugglers and give them somewhere better to stay. They are asked if they want to stay in France but only about 15 per cent want to. The rest want to go to England.”

In the spring, when the weather improves, he expects most of those in the holiday camps will head back to Calais to try and illegally board trains, trucks or cars to England.
Demolition work on filthy makeshift homes at the jungle camp in Calais will resume tomorrow with families and unaccompanied children being moved to better temporary accommodation nearby.

Anarchists, British and German, have been encouraging migrants to confront riot police and there have been angry clashes.

However, on Friday tensions were reduced when migrants played cricket in front of smiling gendarmes in the winter sunshine.

One Afghan, Ilias, said: “We are trying to tell the police we don’t want to fight. It is not fair on the children to have tear gas in the camp.”

Although five acres has been flattened there is still an international legal centre, a theatre and a church.

Official figures show a record 1.25 million asylum seekers arrived in the EU last year, which is up from 563,680 in 2014.

Last year 38,400 claims were lodged in the UK, a rise of 19 per cent from year before.

Last week France’s economy minister, Emmanuel Macron, said the Le Touquet agreement would be threatened by a British withdrawal from the EU.

French President Francois Hollande also warned of “consequences” if the UK voted to leave.