President Hollande warned today of “consequences” if Britain votes to leave the EU, indicating that Brexit would mean migrants in Calais would move to Dover.
The French president insisted that he did not want to “scare” Britons before the referendum on June 23 but made clear that he hopes the UK stays in the EU.
At a one-day UK-France summit Mr Hollande said: “There will be consequences if the UK is to leave the EU, there will be consequences in many areas, in the single market, in the financial, trade, in development, in the economic development between our two countries. It doesn’t mean that everything will be destroyed, I don’t want to give you catastrophic scenarios but there will be consequences.”
He said Brexit would not put the historic relationship between the UK and France in question but added: “There will be consequences, especially in the way we handle the situation in terms of immigration. There is no solution where there are no consequences. There are consequences if the In wins or if Out wins. There will be consequences both ways. Every time the people speak out in a referendum, there are consequences.”
His remarks came after David Cameron was accused of enlisting the French government to spread his own propaganda after an intervention by the French economy minister last night.
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Emmanuel Macron said that if Britain left the bloc it would scupper a deal that keeps unwanted migrants on the French side of the Channel and that Britain would have to deal with them on UK territory. Thousands of migrants have gathered in Calais, setting up home in a camp known as the Jungle, as they look for ways to get to Britain.
He also warned that financial workers in London would move to France once institutions lost “passport rights” allowing them to operate across the EU. “The day this relationship unravels, migrants will no longer be in Calais and the financial passport would work less well,” he told the Financial Times. He added that Paris would roll out “a red carpet” for bankers fleeing London if the UK leaves the EU.
Bernard Jenkin, a senior Eurosceptic Tory MP, who is on the board of Vote Leave, lashed out this morning against Mr Macron’s intervention. He told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4: “What we are having now is propaganda being produced by other European governments at the request of the prime minister to try to scare people [out of] voting Leave. I don’t think responsible European governments are going to cut off their noses to spite their faces just because we vote to leave. It is obviously the safer thing for the UK to take back control over our borders, over our laws, over the money we send to the EU because then we can control our relations with our European partners.”
Mr Jenkin also insisted that Mr Macron’s remarks contradicted comments from Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, who said that opening the borders with the UK was a “foolhardy” option which Paris would not pursue.
At the summit in Amiens, Mr Cameron dismissed suggestions that the French intervention was part of a giant “David Icke-style” conspiracy to “stitch up” the result of the referendum as “nonsense”.
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He said: “When you have ministers in other governments warning about potential consequences that might happen that would be injurious to the United Kingdom, I would say listen to those things.”
Throwing his backing behind the French authorities who are bulldozing the Jungle, Mr Cameron announced £17 million of funding to strengthen British border controls in Calais. He said: “It is very important that people should know that if they come to Calais that is not a waiting room for getting into the United Kingdom, that we have strong borders, we man those borders together in Calais, and it is very important people understand that.
“I applaud the action that the French government is taking to deal with the situation with the camps in Calais and to say to people that they should be seeking asylum in France and if they are not asylum seekers they should be returned to the countries from which they came. That I think is absolutely the right approach and the president has my 100 per cent backing in the work he is doing to deliver that. And as the money that we announced today shows, we are absolutely working in a joint endeavour.”
