The reception of Ocean Viking passengers in France continues to be debated. “If you were in charge, would you have let those 44 children die?” launched the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin, questioned on the subject by a member of the National Rally (RN) in the National Assembly. For Gérard Larcher, President of the Senate, guest of Europe Matin Thursday, the government’s migration policy “lacks coherence”. “On the one hand, there is a humanitarian duty, to save, care for, feed and on the other hand, there is a State duty to have a migration policy, that is the question that must be asked. “, he said at the microphone of Europe 1.
“We don’t have a migration policy”
“The boat was closer to the port of Sfax than to the port of Toulon”, assured Gérard Larcher before adding that the French State must “have national legislation”. “In 1973, there were 1,620 asylum applications in France. Today, 121,554 asylum applications” were recorded in 2021, an increase of 30%, compared to 2020 but below the level reached in 2019. A situation to which France must respond, judges the President of the Senate, mainly by dealing with asylum, by dealing with labor immigration by quotas decided by Parliament, by dealing with the question of family reunification, has it he listed.
“We don’t have a migration policy, that’s the point. Look at what’s happening in the Channel, between France and the United Kingdom. We’ve just made a remake of the financial extension of the Le Touquet agreements and at the same time time, almost 70% of those who arrive on the French coast to go to the United Kingdom come from the Belgian border. This means that there is no immigration policy, that there is no of migratory control”, he supported the microphone of Europe 1.
Gérard Larcher calls for a European response to the reception of migrants. “But in the meantime, it is imperative that we have a real migration policy. We will, it seems, have a text at the beginning of the year. We will have to see if this text is an announcement text, a text of appearance or a real text that defines a migration policy”, he concluded.