François Hollande visits Calais migrant camp, wants it closed by year's end

The migrant camp in Calais must be fully dismantled by the end of the year, French President François Hollande said Monday, addressing a major issue for his Socialist government ahead of next year's presidential election.

Hollande, who was visiting Calais for the first time since winning office in 2012, said the camp known as "the Jungle" is a "humanitarian emergency."

Authorities say about 7,000 people live in squalid conditions near the port of Calais, ultimately hoping to get to Britain. But aid groups say the number is closer to 10,000.

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Hollande, who is eyeing a re-election bid, is facing harsh criticism from conservative and far-right rivals who say the camp is a symbol of his failure to deal with Europe's migrant crisis.

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is competing to win the conservative primary, promised last week in Calais that he could solve the issue in a few months by re-establishing strict border controls all around the country.

France is a member of Europe's passport free-travel zone while Britain is not.

In a speech to police forces securing the area, Hollande vowed to shut the camp "with method and determination" so that new camps don't appear near Calais or elsewhere across France.

Hollande said police forces will remain in the area "as long as needed" after the camp is shut.

Migrants to be moved to centres across France

"We must guarantee a durable and effective sealing of the French-British border," he said, insisting that British authorities must also do their part.

He expressed opposition to renegotiating the 2003 treaty that effectively puts the British border in Calais. Sarkozy, who signed it as interior minister, now wants to send migrants to a centre on British territory.

"This would be too easy to say: 'Let them go to the U.K.' … That would largely open the stream [of migrants]," Hollande said in a second speech in the port of Calais.

The government announced plans in the summer to disperse Calais migrants to centres across France, where they will be able to apply for asylum. The government has not given a firm timeline.

Hollande reaffirmed that plan Saturday when he visited one of France's 164 migrant reception centres in the central city of Tours.

Reception centres will hold 40-50 people for up to four months while authorities study their cases. Migrants who don't seek asylum will be deported.

In a letter to Hollande, eight non-profit organizations helping migrants called for a long-term policy of hospitality and integration in France. They criticized the dismantling of the Calais camp as a "short-term view that does not solve anything for the dozens of people who will continue to arrive every day in Calais."

British lawmaker Charlie Elphicke, of the city of Dover, across the Channel, said Monday that "the French Government needs to make sure it actually happens this time and that the people they remove are stopped from just moving back to Calais."

"Britain has already paid millions for walls and fences in Calais. Yet the French keep asking for more of our money. Our taxpayers' money should be spent on more border security at Dover and in the English Channel," Elphicke said.