French officials have made their first interception on the water as part of a new policy aimed at stopping small boats carrying illegal migrants to the UK.
A so-called taxi-boat was boarded by French officers on Saturday on the Aa canal in Gravelines, which is on the Channel coast above Calais.
This follows a change of tactics agreed in November under increasing pressure from the UK government to enhance intervention efforts.
A photograph of the operation aftermath shows men, suspected to be involved in people-smuggling, on an inflatable dinghy, with the police launch alongside. The inflatable was subsequently towed to the dockside.
The French maritime prefecture has not commented on the incident, citing an ongoing judicial investigation concerning the small boat.
France's new approach, established during a summit in July between President Emmanuel Macron and UK leader Sir Keir Starmer, signifies a shift from previous methods where interventions were limited to beach launches, deemed safer operationally.
Smugglers previously adapted to these protocols, employing taxi-boats to evade police detection by picking up groups entering the water from farther offshore.
As per official French documents, these methods yielded an 81% success rate for smugglers in 2025.
Despite last year's increase in migrant crossings – from 36,566 in 2024 to 41,472 – numbers were still below the peak of 45,774 observed in 2022.
In July 2025, the agreement to intercept vessels was complicated by concerns over the risks to life during operations and the legal responsibilities of officers involved.
However, these issues appear to have been resolved. Under the operational guidelines, gendarmes will only act against taxi-boats before they load migrants, rather than intervening with fully-loaded vessels.
This procedure seems to have been implemented during Saturday's operation, where authorities suspected that the inflatable was preparing to pick up migrants.
