UK asylum: New financial agreement with France will put lives at risk, warns MSF
Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) expresses deep concern over the announcement of a new three-year financial agreement (2026-2029) between France and the United Kingdom aimed at strengthening and pursuing dangerous migration policies at the border.
The strategy implemented at the France-UK border, reinforced by the expansion of dangerous interceptions at sea, traps thousands of women, men and children in a cycle of violence, deprivation and misery in France.
Every day, MSF medical and mental health teams in Calais and Dunkirk witness the significant physical and psychological consequences resulting from these policies on people on the move.
“This agreement is another cog in a machinery of brutality that does not deter people from trying to cross the Channel on unseaworthy boats," says Michaël Neuman, Migration Programme Manager for MSF in France.
"It forces them to make increasingly dangerous journeys, with departure points far away, some as far as the Belgian coast, which makes the crossing even longer and more perilous.”
Liz Harding, Humanitarian Representative for MSF in the UK, says:
“More policing, more patrols, more equipment, more interceptions - and now ‘payment by results’ funding. Between this deal and the last, the UK government will have spent over £1 billion on measures that deliberately inflict harm and endanger lives. It is time to face reality: these resources should support safe and accessible pathways and dignified reception conditions.”
MSF has repeatedly denounced the harmful impact of migration policies implemented by France and the UK. This includes financial deals and the “One in One out” agreement, which trades returns for limited legal pathways while failing to provide safe and sustainable access to protection.
These measures do not stop people from seeking sanctuary in the UK, nor do they reduce loss of life. Instead, they drive men, women and children into the hands of smugglers and traffickers and force them to undertake increasingly dangerous – sometimes fatal - journeys across the Channel.
More than 110 people have died crossing the Channel since the last funding agreement was signed in March 2023.
MSF and the UK asylum crisis
MSF is responding to the medical consequences of the UK’s harmful asylum system.
Successive governments have continued to implement punitive anti-migration deterrence policies that have caused medical and psychological harm and eroded the protections for people seeking safety.