A group of migrants on an inflatable dinghy leave the beach of Petit-Fort-Philippe in northern France in an attempt to cross the English Channel to reach Britain, September 27, 2025. ABDUL SABOOR / REUTERS

Britain and France on Thursday, April 23, signed a new three-year deal to stop undocumented migrants making the risky journey across the Channel in small boats. Under the deal, France pledged to increase law enforcement on the coast by more than half to fight irregular migration to Britain, reaching 1,400 officers by 2029.

Britain will meanwhile provide up to €766 million in funding – though nearly a quarter of that will have strings attached and be paid only if the French measures work. The cross-Channel neighbors have been wrangling for months over the renewal of the Sandhurst treaty, which sets out the UK's financial contribution to French efforts to stop migrants attempting the perilous sea crossing to Britain.

The United Kingdom has long accused France of doing too little to prevent would-be asylum seekers – a hot-button issue in British politics – from setting off from French shores, with smugglers and migrants taking ever-greater risks to avoid detection.

As a result, London insisted it would only renew the Sandhurst treaty – first signed in 2018, extended in 2023 and set to expire this year – if it could impose conditions on how the French government uses British taxpayers' money.

'Flexibility'

"We will now have flexibility to fund things that we know are working," UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said Thursday, during a visit to northern France, where she inked the deal with her French counterpart. According to a French interior ministry document on the accord, if the new measures do not deliver "sufficient results, based on a joint annual assessment, the funding will be redirected to new actions."

French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the agreement was key for "combating" and "eradicating" illegal immigration networks. Even if the conditional portion is not paid, the UK's core contribution of €580 million still represents a €40 million hike from what it paid under the last treaty.

Doctors Without Borders criticized the "results-based" funding scheme, arguing it would not deter people from seeking refuge in the UK. The organization warned the policy would instead "push men, women and children into the hands of smugglers and traffickers and force them to undertake the increasingly dangerous, sometimes deadly, crossings" to avoid being caught.

At least 29 migrants died at sea in the Channel last year, according to an Agence-France Presse tally based on official French and British sources. According to official British figures, 41,472 people reached the UK illegally in small boats in 2025, the second-highest figure since large-scale crossings were first detected in 2018.

Starmer under pressure

The deal's renewal comes at a crunch time for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who faces political pressure from the right to curb immigration. On top of that, the center-left leader is engulfed in an unrelenting scandal over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States despite his friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

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Many believe Starmer's political survival relies on his Labour party defying predictions of a chastening set of defeats in May's local elections, caught between a surging Green party to the left and hard-right anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage's Reform UK.

Besides the step-up in law enforcement on the beaches, France is looking to deploy drones, helicopters and digital resources to "better prevent attempted crossings" and reduce the number of departures, particularly of "taxi boats," the roadmap said.

"A large share of the resources planned under this partnership will be concentrated from the start of the summer and throughout the summer period," traditionally the peak period for small boat crossings, the document says. By the terms of the international law of the sea, once a boat has set off from shore, the authorities can only intervene to save people from drowning.

The French side has pointed out that since the beginning of 2026, arrivals in the UK have halved compared with the same period last year. Around 480 smugglers have also been arrested in 2025, according to the French interior ministry.

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