FRENCH cops can’t go in shallow water to prevent migrant dinghies from leaving, the country’s interior minister has said.
The job of was to save lives not put them at risk, Laurent Nunez has claimed.
He added that puncturing dinghies close to the shore was unacceptable.
Mr Nunez also warned that the French would not allow any British boats to return migrants to French waters as it would breach their sovereignty.
His comments come at the end of a week when 1,129 migrants crossed the in just four days.
Wednesday saw a .
A total of 18,579 migrants have come to the UK so far this year, a drop of 40 percent compared to the same period last year.
Mr Nunez said no interventions were allowed outside of two “frameworks”.
The first was land-based, where officers could stop migrants before they reached the water.
The other was a new, specially trained elite police unit which could intercept people-smugglers’ boats at sea.
He told a parliamentary commission into UK-French migration treaties: “On the boundary between what is at sea and what is on land, I would say that there is no intervention by the police or the gendarmerie once people are in the water.”
Mr Nunez, said there was an exception to this – if officers saw a vessel capsizing then they could intervene to rescue migrants.
The shadow home secretary said: “This confirms what a French gendarme admitted to me on a beach a few weeks ago – French land forces will stand by and do nothing while illegal immigrants embark in knee-deep water.
“Some of them later drown – so not intervening is actually causing people to die.
“I have stood next to a boat launching in shallow water and they could easily be safely stopped, as the Belgians do.
“The French government is openly defying . President Macron promised back in July 2025 he would change the French to allow intervention in shallow water but nothing has changed.”
During the parliamentary commission meeting, Mr Nunez was asked about footage showing cops wading into water to puncture a small boat.
Responding, he said: “Regarding the actions you mention, which allegedly involve damaging boats to prevent them from setting sail again, I repeat that our priority is saving human lives.
“I am not aware of such practices, which are unacceptable.”
He said the priority was interception on land, adding: “The priority is indeed to prevent people from taking to the water.
“The doctrine for intervention at sea is a different matter; it is an operation carried out under the authority of the maritime prefect under extremely strictly defined conditions.
“There are no interventions at sea outside the two frameworks I have just outlined: land-based intervention, to prevent people from setting off from land, and the doctrine of intervention at sea, which is very new and has resulted in around ten interventions since its introduction a few months ago.
“Outside these two frameworks, there are no at-sea interventions, except where absolutely necessary to save human lives and come to the aid of migrants.”
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has ordered a security review after failed to intercept two small boats crossing the Channel and on the south coast in 24 hours.
It comes after Prime Minister admitted and put the blame on Brexit.
