The United Kingdom and France are negotiating an experimental agreement for the exchange of migrants who could lay the foundations for a wider agreement at European level. The idea, still in the embryonic phase, provides that London refers to a limited number of migrants in Paris irregularly through the sleeve, receiving people with legal rights in exchange at the entrance to the country, in particular cases related to family reunification.
Exchange ‘one by one’
According to British sources, the goal is to test a ‘one by one’ system that can help discourage traffickers and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the hard line promised by the government of Keir Starmer. “We are in the initial discussion phase on a scheme that allows the return of a limited number of migrants to France, in exchange for the reception of others in the United Kingdom according to family reunification criteria,” explained a British official, as reported by the Financial Times.
“We are intensifying our collaboration with France and with other European countries dealing with the same challenges, exploring new and innovative measures to dismantle the business models of the criminal bands of smuggling,” added a spokesman for the Ministry of the London Interior.
A European agreement?
The French Ministry of the Interior confirmed that the country is negotiating an agreement with the United Kingdom to resume some irregular migrants who have crossed their sleeves. “The interest of France is to discourage migrants (and the smuggling networks) from trying to reach the United Kingdom from France,” he said.
The Ministry added that ambition is to extend the project to a wider program at European level. “It is a pilot project that anticipates a future European agreement, which France supports with force,” he said. The agreement “is based on the principle ‘one by one’: for any legal admission in the context of family reunification, there would be a corresponding readmission of migrants without documents that managed to cross the sleeve”.
But an EU diplomat called “premature” the Franco-British discussions and warned that an extension of the model to the other Member States risks going on, given the growing internal hostility towards migrants in many capital.
Record growth of landings
Despite the fact that it has long preferred a shared European mechanism, Paris has opened up to experimentation, convinced that it can constitute a deterrent for both migrants and for traffickers’ networks. The proposal is part of a growing pressure context: since the beginning of the year, more than 8,200 people have crossed their sleeves on small boats, with an increase of 30 percent compared to the same period of 2024
Only last Tuesday, 705 people crossed their sleeve in 12 boats, recording the highest number of irregular arrivals in a single day in 2025. A very high number, even if far from the absolute record of 1,305 people landed on September 3, 2022.
The latest data bring the cumulative number of arrivals in 2025 to a provisional total of 8,888 people. It is an increase of 42 percent compared to the same period last year, when the total was 6,265 people, and 81 percent compared to the same period of 2023, when the total was 4,899.
The post-Brexit node
Before Brexit, London participated in the Dublin regulation, which provided for the management of asylum requests in the first entrance country. The United Kingdom was therefore entitled to return irregular migrants back, even if the other EU member countries (such as Italy) accepted them. Now that London is no longer part of the blockade, postponing people in continental Europe is even more complicated.
