Five European countries eager to curb illegal migration announced plans on Tuesday to take on smuggling gangs online by challenging their recruitment efforts on social media.
Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium agreed on a five-point plan anti-smuggling plan for next year that also calls for Iraqi-Kurdish smuggling gangs to face justice and have their tactics exposed by sharing intelligence across borders.
Germany separately told Britain it would widen anti-smuggling laws to cut off a route to the English Channel, where about 34,000 people have crossed illegally this year. The UK suspects smugglers are using Germany to store equipment and Prime Minister Keir Starmer has made the issue a political priority.
At a meeting on Tuesday the five countries known as the Calais Group reported “significant successes” in arresting suspects and seizing their equipment, but said they continue to see “too many devastating tragedies”. They hope to use their justice systems to increase pressure on the gangs.
Next year, they will seek “innovative ways” to tackle the gangs' use of social media to advertise their smuggling services, a joint statement said. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser suggested this could include putting pressure on platforms to ban such advertising.
They also agreed to work with countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Western Balkans to run what they called “awareness-raising communication campaigns to deter irregular migrants from paying [gangs] to facilitate high-risk irregular journeys across routes into Europe”. A pilot region will be chosen next year.
A third goal is to ensure gangs can face justice by tightening legal loopholes and sharing intelligence through the EU agency Europol. The five countries said they would be “particularly targeting” criminal activities by Iraqi Kurdish networks involved in smuggling migrants into and across Europe.
The plans also include going after the gangs' hidden financing and looking for ways to expand joint operations, including with the border guard agency Frontex. One target of the money trail will be informal Hawala banking.
“We are dealing with organised crime and dangerous, often armed groups of perpetrators,” Ms Faeser said. “The aim is to prevent people's hardship from being brutally exploited in order to send them across the English Channel in potentially deadly rubber dinghies.”
German anti-smuggling law currently extends to illegal entries to European Union or Schengen member states, which no longer covers Britain. The UK's Home Office said the promised change to include the Channel “will give German prosecutors more tools to tackle the supply and storage of dangerous small boats”.
It is unclear when Germany might adopt the revised legislation, as it heads for an early dissolution of parliament and a general election expected in February. Germany's ambassador to Britain, Miguel Berger, said the UK's exit from the EU had also taken it out of police databases in the Schengen zone.
“That’s why we need to strengthen the direct law enforcement co-operation,” Mr Berger told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday. He said many of the people-smuggling networks operating in Germany were the same ones working in the Channel and on the EU's eastern border between Poland and Belarus.
“If we also co-operate in the countries of transit and origin, I think we can jointly put a lot of pressure on these criminal networks,” he said. A joint UK-Germany plan says they will push Europol to focus on tackling “whole end-to-end routes” of people smuggling.
Mr Starmer has named securing Britain's borders as one of the three “foundations” of his Labour government. After winning power in July's general election he scrapped the previous Conservative government's plans to deport people to Rwanda, in what he called an expensive gimmick.
He hopes instead to break up smuggling gangs with a new border security command and cut the cost of accommodating migrants by processing asylum claims faster. Home Office figures show 20,000 people have come ashore on 368 boats since Labour won power.
“For too long organised criminal gangs have been exploiting vulnerable people, undermining border security in the UK and across Europe while putting thousands of lives at risk. We are clear that this cannot go on,” Britain's Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said. “Germany is already a key partner in our efforts to crack down on migrant smuggling, but there is always more we can do together.”
