EU says it will assess legality of UK-France migrant return deal before offering support

The EU has said it will assess Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron’s migrant return deal to see whether it is compatible “with the spirit and the letter of the law”.

While the UK has said it is confident the deal will be approved, a European Commission spokesperson said it wanted to know more about the “substance and form” of the agreement before expressing support.

The deal was struck on Thursday by the UK and France with the aim of stemming the flow of small boats across the channel through a one in, one out system.

About 50 migrants a week will be deported back to France in exchange for other migrants being allowed to claim asylum in the UK through a safe and legal route where they have not tried to cross on a small boat.

However, it will still have to be ratified by the European Commission and EU states, some of which in the south of the bloc have expressed reservations.

Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, said on Friday she thought the commission would sign off on the pilot scheme.

But a spokesperson for the commission on Friday said it would “assess the concrete modalities of this cooperation”.

“We continue to work with France and the UK as well as other EU member states to support solutions that are compatible with the spirit and the letter of EU law,” he said.

The spokesperson added: “What we have now is an announcement and a political agreement, in principle, to have a pilot agreement.

“Once we know more about the substance and the form of that, we can tell you more about it, but we will look at this together with UK and France we will be working with all parties involved.”

Many details of the scheme remain unclear, such as how many people will be returned, how those involved will be chosen and when it will start.

Talking to LBC radio on Friday, Cooper said she did not expect the rollout to be delayed by opposition from Europe, despite Mediterranean countries’ concern about the prospects of returned asylum seekers travelling back to southern Europe.

“We have been talking to the EU commissioners,” she said. “We’ve also been talking to other European interior ministers and governments throughout this process.

“The French interior minister and I have been speaking about this, to develop this, since October of last year, and the EU commissioners have been very supportive. So that is why we have designed this in a way to work, not just for the UK and France, but in order to fit with all their concerns as well.”

Asked whether she was confident it would be signed off by the EU, she said: “Because we’ve done that work all the way through, we do expect the EU commission to continue to be supportive.”

However, she did not say what approach she expected from individual member states including Spain, Italy, Greece, Malta and Cyprus.

Starmer and Macron announced the pilot at the end of a three-day state visit by the French president that was designed to show a new level of post-Brexit cooperation between the two countries.

Under the scheme, British officials will choose a certain number of arrivals to return to areas of France away from the northern coast, in return for taking asylum seekers who can show they have a family link to Britain.

Ministers hope the scheme will discourage people from making the Channel crossing at all.

Cooper said on Friday: “We’re actually not fixing the ultimate figures, either for the pilot or for any further phases.”

Neither Cooper nor Starmer, however, have denied that the pilot will originally apply to just 50 people a week – about 6% of the average weekly total.

Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “The numbers will be tiny. We will be allowing 94% of illegal immigrants to remain in the UK, which is no deterrent whatsoever.”