Calais mayor fails to stop UK-financed wall
Calais Mayor Natacha Bouchart has failed to stop the construction of a British-financed wall designed to stop migrants trying to board lorries hading for the United Kingdom.
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Regional officials on Monday threw out the right-wing mayor's call for work to stop on the one-kilometre-long, four-metre-high wall, which the British government is financing to the tune of 2.7 million euros.
Work started on 20 September and three days later Bouchart filed an injunction to halt it on environmental grounds.
She argued that it was no longer necessary because the French government had pledged to clear the Jungle camp, which houses 7-12,000 migrants.
"Calais residents are fed up with seeing barriers and barbed wire everywhere," she told the AFP news agency. "They feel completely hemmed in."
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