French President Francois Hollande said yesterday that the sprawling “Jungle” migrant camp in Calais would be dismantled by the end of this year under a plan to spread asylum seekers around the country.
“I have come to Calais to confirm the decision that I took with the government ... to dismantle (the camp) definitively, entirely and rapidly, that means by the end of the year,” Hollande said on his first visit to Calais as president.
The French president called on British authorities to help in assisting the migrants, most of whom are desperate to reach Britain.
“I am determined to see the British authorities play their part in the humanitarian effort that France is undertaking” in Calais, Hollande said, flanked by security forces.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 migrants are currently living in the Jungle, the launchpad for their attempts to stow away on lorries heading across the Channel to England.
Hollande met police, local politicians, NGOs and business leaders in the northern port city but was not expected to visit the camp itself.
The Socialist president has been under pressure from right-wing rivals to close down the Jungle.
A flurry of preparations in Calais suggest the operation to raze the collection of makeshift shelters may begin shortly.
The government has said the migrants, who are mostly from Sudan and Afghanistan, will be moved to 164 reception centres around the country “before winter”.
Hollande said Britain’s vote to exit the European Union did not diminish its responsibility for the migrants camped across the Channel.
“Just because the United Kingdom has taken a sovereign decision, it does not mean it is freed from its obligations towards France,” he said.
Hollande said the vote also had no effect on the bilateral Le Touquet agreement which effectively means that the British border extends to Calais’s ferry ports, where British immigration officials check passports and inspect vehicles.
Hollande’s visit comes just days after his conservative predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy – who is hoping to return as president in next year’s election – visited Calais to promote his tough line on migration.
Migration has been a low-key issue of Hollande’s four-year presidency.
But he has been forced to take a stronger stance on the issue, under pressure from Sarkozy and far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
Both Sarkozy and Le Pen have made immigration and national identity key themes in early campaigning for next year’s election, which has echoes of the US race for the White House.
On a visit to one of the new reception centres in the central city of Tours at the weekend Hollande said France would not be a “country of camps”.
Calais has become a symbol of Europe’s failure to resolve the migration crisis that continues to divide the continent, after people fleeing war and misery across the Mediterranean began pouring into Europe in unprecedented numbers.
Plans to relocate the Calais migrants have sparked controversy and protests, with residents in some parts of the country vehemently opposed to taking them in.
Several hundred people demonstrated at the weekend in Versailles, west of Paris, against plans to move a group of migrants there.
The Jungle camp has also become a sore point in relations between France and Britain.
Last week, building work began on a British-funded wall to clamp down on repeated attempts by migrants to stow away on trucks heading for Britain.
Rights groups have criticised the hardship and dangers facing the migrants living in the camp, particularly the hundreds of unaccompanied minors (see accompanying report).
A 14-year-old Afghan boy was killed by a car earlier this month as he tried to climb aboard a truck.
Under EU rules, under-18s travelling alone are allowed join family in Britain.
Around half of the unaccompanied minors in Calais are estimated to have family across the Channel.
But the process of trying to reunite them with their relatives has been dogged by delays.

Calais migrant camp demolition raises child trafficking fears, says UN children’s agency
Lone children living in the shanty town near Calais are likely to go missing or risk being trafficked when France dismantles the migrant camp, the United Nations said yesterday, urging authorities to speed up the reunion of children with families in Britain.
The UN children’s agency, Unicef, said it was concerned for the safety and future of unaccompanied minors living in the so-called “Jungle” camp, on the outskirts of the northern French port town.
“Before the bulldozers arrive, there must be robust plans to safeguard the hundreds of unaccompanied children currently stranded in the camp,” said Lily Caprani, Unicef UK’s deputy executive director.
Clashes with police broke out in February when authorities began evicting refugees.
“If mistakes from the first eviction are repeated, we will see more children going missing, falling prey to traffickers and facing the winter without a home,” said Caprani in a statement to the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Rape, forced labour, beatings and death are just some of the dangers faced by children travelling without their parents, Unicef says.
“The UK must work with the French authorities to get children into appropriate accommodation, where they can have access to care and legal support, so they can reach their families (in Britain) safely,” said Caprani.
Thousands of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia have converged on Calais over the past year, hoping to find a way of getting across the Channel to Britain.
About 7,000 migrants are living in the remaining northern half of the camp, up from 4,500 in June, according to local authorities, although humanitarian groups put the number closer to 9,000.
Most attempt to climb onto lorries or trains using the Channel Tunnel, and police have had to be deployed permanently in the area.
London and Paris have struck agreements on issues such as the recently begun construction of a giant wall on the approach road to Calais port in an attempt to try to stop migrants who attempt daily to board cargo trucks bound for Britain.
“What happens in the Jungle is ultimately a matter for the French authorities, what they choose to do with it,” a British government spokesman said.