Pullbacks in the Channel

Since May 2025, media footage has shown French police wading through shallow waters just off the northern coast near Calais, using knives to slash so-called “taxi boats” packed with asylum seekers, thus forcing those on board to abandon the sinking dinghies and scramble back to shore for safety. While such scenes are not entirely new – French police has not been known for their gallantry in attempts to stop taxi‑boats from crossing the Channel and have often been accused of resorting to violent tactics – these ‘enforcement techniques’ have now been provided with a legal basis, as Interior Minister Retailleau has endorsed a new policy allowing police to ‘take action’ up to 300 meters from the shore. The policy marks a significant shift from prior rules, which limited intervention at sea to cases of distress. This development is part of a broader UK-France strategy aimed at further securitizing the Channel. Last week, negotiations for a new UK–France agreement culminated in the announcement of a ‘one in, one out’ pilot scheme, under which the UK will return small boat arrivals to France while accepting asylum seekers selected from France who can demonstrate family ties in Britain. The agreement – that  still awaits to be evaluated by the Commission – echoes the controversial logic of the EU-Turkey Statement.

These measures signal a sui generis evolution in European migration control. For the first time, rather than pushing asylum seekers back to third countries to avoid legal responsibilities under EU and international law, an EU Member State is directly preventing departures from its own territory.  As the  UK-France agreement unfolds, and with the New Pact on Migration and Asylum beginning to take shape across the EU, France’s evolving practice in Calais raises concerns about its compliance with EU and international law.

Shaping a new model?

The newly crafted “300-metres” rule is part of a UK-France agreement aimed at containing migration from France in the post-Brexit era. Since January 2021, the UK is no longer bound by the Dublin Regulation, complicating efforts to return asylum seekers from its territory to other EU Member States. Consequently, the UK government has increasingly resorted to pushbacks towards France in an effort to deter irregular crossings. Despite these measures, the number of individuals successfully reaching the UK has continued to rise. In 2022, over 45,000 people crossed the Channel; although numbers dipped in 2023, they surged by 25% in 2024. In response, French police have been given green light to intervene up to 300 metres from the shore, regardless of whether boats are at risk of distress. Attempts to stop people at sea have been backed by the financial incentives given by the UK over the years. Since 2010, the UK has invested more than £300 million in efforts to secure the French border by funding measures such as fencing, surveillance cameras, detection equipment, and deploying guards and police forces. In this way, the UK has de facto outsourced its border controls (see here a critique). By enforcing the 300 metres rule, France will now be acting as a containment zone for asylum seekers attempting to cross the EU external border. This scenario seems to establish a new variation of the externalization models which have been gaining momentum over the last years (see here, here, and here).

These models stemmed from Member States partnering up with third countries to bypass their responsibilities under international human rights law and EU law. In the central Mediterranean, Italy and  Malta have established operational partnerships with Libyan authorities to support  systematic pullbacks, despite the well-documented risk of arbitrary detention, torture, and other serious human rights violations taking place in Libya. On the eastern side, Turkey has served as a containment zone in exchange for substantial financial compensation from the EU on the basis of the EU-Turkey Statement. In order to facilitate the implementation of the Statement and the move of commodified migrants across the Greek-Turkey border, Turkey was designated by Greece as a safe third country on the basis of Article 33(2)(c) of the Asylum Procedures Directive. This designation has been contested as Turkey has been exposing asylum seekers to limited access to asylum procedures, lack of effective remedies, and a real risk of arbitrary detention and onward refoulement (for a comment on the attempts to challenge the Statement and the legal presumption of Turkey as safe, see here). While there is no text of the UK-France deal yet – only a joint statement and unilateral statements from the UK Prime Minister and Home Office – the agreement seems to follow the model of the Statement.

What differentiates the French case, however, is that France is an EU Member State and, as such, it is bound to comply with EU asylum and fundamental rights standards. This spares the UK the need to justify outsourcing border control to a ‘safe’ third country, as required in cases like Turkey. The arrangement thereby allows the UK to distance itself from the stigma of conducting direct pushbacks, by outsourcing enforcement actions to an EU State whose status as ‘safe’ is both factually and legally accepted. This, in turn, is likely to allow the UK government to avoid a repeat of the judicial defeat that beset its initial attempt at externalization. Under the Rwanda agreement, Rwanda was supposed to process asylum claims from certain individuals arriving in the UK. However, the UK Supreme Court rejected this externalization plan, ruling that Rwanda could not be considered a ‘safe’ country.

Sleep tight, there is nothing to be afraid of…

Pullback operations conducted within 300 meters off the coastline occur in the French territorial sea, where France has full jurisdiction to enforce national law, inter alia immigration and border control measures, in accordance with Articles 21 and 25 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). By asserting its authority to stop taxi-boats within its territorial sea prior to their attempt to cross the Channel, France implicitly considers the activity of taxy-boats as falling outside the scope of innocent passage (Article 19(2) UNCLOS). Nonetheless, the legality of these coercive measures and of the upcoming agreement ultimately depends on their compliance with binding rules of maritime law, international human rights and EU law.

First, under maritime law, France is under the duty to rescue persons in distress at sea, as set out in Article 98 UNCLOS and reinforced by the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue and the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. Although the “300-meters rule” authorizes police interventions close to the shore, proximity to land does not rule out the possibility of situations of distress (as it happened in this case )  and slashing dinghies with knives, even if close to the shore, arguably does not help people in distress at sea.

Second, France is bound by human rights obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) made clear that States have a positive obligation under Article 2 ECHR to protect the lives of asylum seekers and migrants at or near their territorial border (N.D. and N.T. v Spain paras 174-177). The Court also made clear that States are bound by Article 3 ECHR to protect migrants from ill-treatment and to ensure that they are not subjected to inhuman treatment during border enforcement operations (M.A. and Others v Lithuania, para 230). France’s use of force must therefore be necessary, proportionate, and accompanied by appropriate procedural safeguards. The systematic and indiscriminate use of physical force by the French police to prevent departures – also vis-a-vis children and other vulnerable groups – raises serious concerns.

Third, France is bound by EU law standards of protection for asylum seekers. The CJEU has held on several occasions that the practice of pushbacks is contrary to Article 6 of  Directive 2013/32, which guarantees access to the asylum procedure, and Article 18 CFR (C-392/22 paras 50-51), which safeguards the right to asylum. Drawing on the case law of the ECtHR, the CJEU has also confirmed that pushbacks may violate the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits returning individuals to a country where they face serious harm (Joined Cases C-564/19  PPU and C-713/19 PPU, paras. 50-53). The fact that the new rules enable pullbacks rather than pushbacks does not make this case-law inapplicable. Although France, as a Member State, may be presumed safe and compliant with EU law and human rights standards, scholars highlighted that “safety is not an abstract or generalizable status, but a function of individual experience and access to effective protection” (Moreno-Lax, p.363).

It matters, in this regard, France has repeatedly been condemned by the ECtHR for its failure in guaranteeing  asylum seekers effective protection, access to asylum procedures, adequate reception conditions, and safeguards against arbitrary detention (see, for example,  N.H. and Others v. France and M.D. and A.D. v. France). It should also be recalled that many of the migrants attempting to reach the UK are individuals stranded in the infamous “Jungle” of Calais, living in a state of legal limbo and awaiting an opportunity to leave French territory. Human rights organizations have extensively documented that the conditions in these encampments may constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. These include inadequate shelter, lack of access to basic services, repeated forced evictions, and reports of police violence. Faced with such conditions, many choose not to seek asylum in France, believing their chances of protection, family reunification, or basic dignity may be greater in the UK.

Enabling the new pact?

The implementation of the “300 metres rule” comes at a time when the legal standards for the protection of asylum seekers and irregular third-country nationals have been significantly eroded through the adoption of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum. The pact introduced – inter alia – the screening procedure, which can be conducted in border zones or even at sea. As the screening procedure enables authorities to perform preliminary checks on identity, health, and security status without triggering full access to the asylum procedure (see here), the new police measure seems to prepare the field for turning French shores into a buffer zone where fundamental rights receive no consideration. While the UK-France agreement still has to be scrutinized by the European Commission as to the potential infringement of EU exclusive powers, the harsh police measures on the French northern coast are already a reality that leaves migrants trapped in limbo within an EU Member State that offers little prospect of protection. If the EU–Turkey Statement set the stage for the hotspot approach, it remains to be seen what new forms of externalization will emerge under the shadow of the New Pact. Unfortunately, these early signs do not seem promising in terms of protection of fundamental rights.