MIGRANT rights campaigners are calling for an end to the “policy of hostility” at the Britain-France border on the 20th anniversary of the Touquet Treaty. 

The treaty, signed in February 2003, allowed for reciprocal border controls in France and Britain and increased border security, preventing refugees from reaching Britain’s shores to claim asylum. 

The agreement is described by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants as the “founding act” of the “hostile” immigration policy at the Britain-France border where more than 300 refugees and migrants have reportedly died while trying to reach Britain since 2003. 

To mark the anniversary of the treaty, two reports released in 2022 and 2021 which investigated escalating security measures, surveillance and violence against refugees at the border, have been translated for the first time in English. 

Investigating 30 Years of the Political Factory of Deterrence by political scientist Pierre Bonnevalle claims that €1.28 billion (£1.06bn) has been spent on enforcing the Britain-France border since 1998. 

Commenting on the anniversary of the treaty, Mr Bonnevalle said: “Each new treaty between France and Britain brings new state violence, confining exiles to survive in increasingly inhumane conditions. 

“The work of these reports documents the political manufacturing of a hostile environment created and enforced on the northern coastline and funded by Britain. 

“Twenty years after the Touquet agreements, it is time to put an end to the policy of hostility established through these agreements.”

Hundreds of asylum-seekers remain in squalid encampments in northern France where they are subjected to routine evictions by French police, who confiscate their belongings. 

In November, Home Secretary Suella Braverman announced a new £62 million deal with France to ramp up border patrols by 40 per cent.