Paris migrants' camps cleared after French MPs debate refugee crisis

Two migrants' camps in Paris were cleared on Thursday morning, the day after parliament debated the government's pledge to accept a European Union quota of 24,000 refugees. Prime Minister Manuel Valls told MP he was ready to tighten border controls as Germany has done.

Migrants are escorted out of the camp under the Charles de Gaulle bridge near the Gare d'Austerlitz station in Paris, 17 September 2015 Reuters/Charles Platiau

Several hundred migrants were moved from sites under a bridge by Paris's Austerlitz railway station and the town hall of the 18th arrondissement early on Thursday morning.

Officials promised they would be moved to temporary accomodation, although NGO activists said that some of the centres set aside for the purpose were not suitable.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced last week that seven new centres, able to house 460 people, would be opened, on top of the 1,450 places made available in June.

Valls on Wednesday evening promised that housing refugees would not take resources away from people in difficulty who alread in France.

The government will provide 500-600 million euros for emergency housing, he said.

He was speaking on TF1 television after a parliamentary debate during which he had said that the government would be both "intelligent" and "firm" in handling the crisis.

France "will not hestitate" to reinstate border controls and has already done so on the border with Italy, he said.

Right-wing opposition MPs called for the EU's Schengen free-movement accord to be reviewed in the light of the reestablishment of border controls by Germany, Austria and Hungary.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told the Senate, which debated the question after the National Assembly, that the number of deportations of failed asylum-seekers rose 20 per cent this year and that the govenrment intended to "pursue this trend".