H.E. Mr. Vincent Gu?rend:

I thank the Senator for raising those important points. On the matter of the CAP and ships, I do not have specific information on those ships, but some exceptions are provided for in the sanction regime, and I am sure it is all legal. From a French point of view, we believe that after 60 or 70 years of the CAP, it has been a huge success, even though it has to be changed to be more friendly to the climate, environment and biodiversity. We are fortunate to have developed this policy for the past 50 or so years. As the Senator probably knows, the EU is a strong net exporter of food and agri-products. We are able not only to feed our population but to export, which is good. We may need to import certain products. We are a bigger importer of sunflower oil and maize, which Ukraine is a significant producer of in the world.

We need to remain open to exports and imports of food products. It is in our own interest as a net exporter. From a French point of view, we want to put an emphasis on not being too lenient towards big exporters which are not complying with the Paris Agreement requirements relating to climate change and are pushing deforestation or are exporting products which do not match our sanitary standards. We need to import some grain or some fertiliser and I believe that will remain a necessity.

I have a couple of remarks on migration and the recent developments in the UK. The EU in general, the UN agencies and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have stated clearly what they think of this policy. We strongly disagree with the policy. As has been said, it is probably in breach of several conventions.

Certainly it is not in the spirit of the way we in the EU want to deal with illegal migrants. Within the EU, as the Senator knows, over the last number of years there has been a new proposal on the table called a migratory pact. It is made of various subtexts of regulation on asylum, legal migration and how to fight illegal migration. There has been some progress, by the way, under the French Presidency, even though we have not been able to push this through completely because they are extremely politically sensitive documents. However, we have made some progress. Ultimately, we on the French side strongly believe that first, Europe needs migrants in the long run because of our demographics, second, that we must manage this migration and remain a Continent that provides asylum for asylum seekers for the values we mentioned before and third, this has to organised, managed and with some solidarity mechanism within the EU between the front-line countries and those that are less on the front line. There is a financial burden etc., so there has to be a mechanism or at least redistribution solidarity.

This being said, when it comes more precisely to the UK and France and also the situation in the Channel, and with Calais and Dover, this is not new. We have had these problems for at least 20 years or more. It is true co-operation with the UK was always difficult and it has become really difficult since Brexit, basically, and particularly over the last two to three years with the new British Government. We believe that we are a little bit too easy to use as a scapegoat of some of the difficulties it may have. The co-operation on a practical, daily basis is less smooth than it used to be. The British Government is also now indulging in some practices we believe are in breach of international law, the law of the sea, rescuing people at sea etc. In certain cases - we have seen this even with the Ukrainians - some of the basic factors like accepting families to reunite and others have not necessarily been swiftly followed by the British.

At the same time, we see our responsibility as a kind of last point before the UK on the Continent and we are working closely with our other European partners and neighbours like the Benelux countries, Germany and others to see how to reform this because ultimately, the whole system has to be reformed. You have some of the asylum seekers who ask for asylum in Germany, let us say they are from Afghanistan or another country, they stay in Germany for a couple of months or years then are for different reasons denied asylum in Germany. Then they move to the next country and then through to France, whereas they should stay in Germany and be deported. Then in France they ask for another one and then they try to go to the UK. This mechanism needs the full co-operation of the UK within the EU. Even though Brexit has occurred it should still, in its own interest, remain at the table and it is not at the table. It does not want to address this very complex and very humane situation with us and I mean humane in the sense that we are talking about people here. The situation means there are often very tragic cases, so the UK should remain at the table and it has not and that makes it extremely difficult.

In short, we need more co-operation on this from the UK and over the last couple of years, we have seen a lack of co-operation.