The vast majority of street robberies in Paris are now carried out by the children of Romanian immigrants, France’s Interior Minister has claimed. Mr Gueant, one of the most hardline French Interior Ministers in recent history, has not only pledged to deport immigrant criminals, but also wants to reduce the amount of legal immigration into France.Doubtless grandstanding. You just can't ...

Belgium is to launch a new wave of admissions for illegal immigrants. But the country insisted its decision did not herald "mass regularisation", as many EU countries, including neighbouring France, are strongly opposed to such practices.

Angry though I may be about the number of illegal immigrants (725,000 in 2007) that have managed to get into our country, I do find myself agreeing with Boris Johnson's initiative to have an amnesty. From the BBC: The study into the economic impact of an amnesty for illegal immigrants was carried out by the London School of Economics (LSE). It estimates that, if a minimum of five years' ...

Illegal immigrants have revved up their efforts to enter Britain unnoticed – four men from Iraq have been caught trying to smuggle themselves into the UK in a Bentley. UK Border Agency officers based in France discovered the four stowed in a GT model being transported back from the Nürburgring race track in Germany to the Bentley factory in Crewe. They were caught before the vehicle...

Alarm bells should be ringing for France because of its economic indicators, says a think-tank study released yesterday (15 November) in the presence of Council President Herman Van Rompuy.  More »

Jim Jay on immigration minister Phil Woolas’s nascent demagoguery: Clearly if there is a global economic crisis people are going to blame immigrants rather than the institutions who created those chaotic financial systems? Only if you encourage them Phil. Otherwise people might think someone sorting potatoes has not had much to do with the global economic

Hundreds of thousands of striking workers across France snarled transportation and closed post offices and schools in a sign of discontent with President Sarkozy's response to the economic crisis.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy kicked off the European election campaign in France on Tuesday (5 May) with an impassioned speech in Nîmes, EurActiv France reports. Sarkozy's long-standing EU stances on economic governance were peppered with a few surprises, including a plea for an "economic and security common area" between the EU, Turkey and Russia.

Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Fillon are delivering emergency economic measures today, in order to ward off the ravening credit rating agencies that are questioning France's AAA rating. As a prelude to this act of political drama, a group of France’s super-rich sent a letter to the government urging it to tax them more. In the spirit of solidarity, they said, they were willing to ma...

France is staring into the abyss today, facing fundamental challenges to its political and economic status, and perhaps even its idea of itself as exceptional and, yes, a little better than the rest of us.