Border police have been deployed to the French-Belgian border over fears migrants that are evicted could cross the Belgian border and sneak into Britain.
The French interior minister said: “We have informed the European Commission that we will temporarily depart from Schengen rules,”
“The dismantling of what has been called the ‘Jungle’ is possible and real. We have already seen a movement of migrants in transit,”
“There is the potential for thousands of migrants coming here — not asylum seekers but migrants in transit who do not want to stay in France or Belgium but to go to Britain,” he said.
In January Belgian authorities arrested nearly 1,000 migrants trying their luck in Zeebrugge – compared to just 133 in the same month last year.
With Belgium, there are now seven countries in the Schengen area that have reintroduced border controls in response to a record flow of migrants.
