French security forces clear migrants from Nantes camp

On 23 July, French police cleared a makeshift camp from a park in the western city of Nantes where more than 450 migrants had been living for a month, many of them Eritrean and Sudanese.

According to local officials, the operation was launched in response to reports of inadequate living conditions inside the camp, where migrants were exposed to such bad sanitary conditions that some had contracted scabies.

Asylum applications in the city of Nantes, which has a population of 300,000, soared 28 percent this year, giving Nantes a high number of asylum seekers when compared to other relatively large French cities.

After being evicted from the makeshift camp at the center of the city, the migrants were transported to a public hall where officials will are examining their asylum cases, France24 reported.

Sheltering a significant number of migrants has proved difficult as the local officials claim they can only provide shelter to “the most vulnerable people and asylum seekers as much as possible”. The regional government is ill-equipped to provide shelter to all migrants, as a week prior to the evictions local officials claimed that there are only 100 places in emergency shelters throughout the region.

“It means at least 300 people are going to sleep in the street tonight, without tents,” said Francois Prochasson, a member of a local charity group, speaking to France24. “They are just going to go somewhere else, to another park and nothing will have been fixed,” he added.

The migrants who “cannot claim asylum or legal residency, or who have claimed asylum in another European Union member state, will be asked to leave the country,” regional officials said.

According to a new plan outlined by French president Emmanuel Macron, asylum procedures will be sped up as well as the deportation of failed asylum seekers. The plan still requires the endorsement of the French parliament.

TMP – 09/08/2018