Macron Claims France Will Focus on Migration Crisis Upon Assuming EU Presidency   

Despite top officials within the French government having recently come out in opposition to the EU providing funds to Poland for the construction of its wall along the Belarusian border, President Emmanuel Macron claimed that France will push for action on the migration when it assumes the EU presidency at the beginning of next year.

“We should take a number of actions: stop the institution of lasting camps, act to dismantle the smuggling networks, and strengthen work with the international locations of origin to stop these flows,” Macron said during an interview with the regional daily newspaper La Voix Du Nord.

“I’ll carry reforms under the French presidency of the EU,” the president added.

The announcement comes after France’s Secretary of State for European Affairs, Clément Beaune, said that he’s opposed to the idea of the EU providing funds to Poland to help protect the bloc’s external borders. 

“I am not for a Europe which bristles with barbed wire or is covered with walls,” Beaune said earlier this week after Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kamińsk announced that construction of a wall along Poland’s eastern border with Belarus would begin this year.

Macron also addressed the persistent problem of migrants crossing the English Channel, saying: “We have the British, who oscillate between partnership and provocation. We need to further strengthen collaboration.”

So far this year, some 23,000 migrants have crossed the English Channel