Despite the Risk, Site is a Lure for the Desperate

In 1999, at the request of the French government, the Red Cross opened the Sangatte camp, close to the Eurotunnel complex, to shelter and feed migrants. A growing number of would-be refugees and asylum-seekers were at the time sleeping rough in Calais and surrounding towns, before making their attempt to cross to Britain through the tunnel.

The Sangatte camp, which grew to be bigger than the village of Sangatte itself, officially had capacity to house some 600 people in what was formerly warehouse space, but at peak moments, 2,000 refugees used the camp, including Iraqi Kurds, Afghans and Iranians, many of whom were living in cramped conditions.

In one incident, a 25-year-old Kurdish refugee and several more people were injured after a fight broke out following a football match between Kurds and Afghans at the center.

After UK concerns that the camp was being used as a base for illegal immigration, the then French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, agreed with David Blunkett, the then home secretary, to shut the camp in 2002.

Seven years on, charities in Calais warn that migrants who are sleeping rough are facing dire sanitation problems, still rely on food parcels and are in desperate need of purpose-built shower facilities.

But the Calais mayor, from Sarkozy's centre-right party, the UMP, is adamant that no center must be built that could be an added incentive for migrants to gather in Calais, or which could seem like a new Sangatte.