For a new immigration agreement to reduce crossings across the Channel, France and Germany have asked for better post-Brexit regulations for EU workers and students studying in Britain.

In a letter obtained by The Telegraph, the two nations requested that the European Commission negotiate incentives in addition to an asylum agreement with the United Kingdom.

The early outcome of Sir Keir Starmer's attempts to mend fences with the EU and his vigorous diplomatic outreach to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron is the call to Brussels.

However, any agreement to bring back Channel migrants will be challenging and accompanied by demands on youth mobility and demands that Britain resettle legitimate refugees in Europe in the UK.
Paris and Berlin wrote to the Commission demanding that Brussels "rapidly present a draft negotiating mandate with a view to reaching an agreement with the United Kingdom on asylum and immigration issues."“We believe that Brexit has had very detrimental consequences for the coherence of our migration policies.” said the joint letter.

“The absence of provisions governing the flow of people between the UK and the Schengen area is clearly contributing to the dynamics of irregular flows – and to the danger posed to people using this route in the Channel and the North Sea.”

The joint letter was sent by Nancy Faeser, the German interior minister, and Gérald Darmanin, her outgoing French counterpart on Friday.

Mr Darmanin has now left his post, as France ushered in a new Right-wing government that promises to be even tougher on illegal immigration at the weekend.

As many as 41,078 migrants tried to reach the UK from the EU’s Schengen zone in the first eight months of this year, according to Frontex, the bloc’s border agency.

The ministers said the lack of a deal regulating the movement of “persons between the UK and the Schengen zone is obviously contributing to the momentum of irregular migration flows.”

They added: “The arrival in office of a new British government, demonstrating its intention to co-operate constructively with the EU, seems to us to be conducive to concrete progress on this issue.”

Labour hopes to make the fight against illegal migration part of a new security and defence pact with the EU. The bloc sees the negotiations as a way to impose pressure on the Government to agree to increase legal youth mobility for EU citizens into Britain. Labour has already rejected a call from Brussels to negotiate such a deal, or rejoin the Erasmus student exchange scheme.

Diplomatic sources have previously said that any EU migrant return deal would require Britain to take in a share of migrants from under-pressure countries in the bloc, as member states do.

“We are relying heavily on the commission to simultaneously address the issues of legal mobility, in particular family and professional mobility, the fight against illegal immigration and the right of asylum with our British partner,” the letter reads.

During the Brexit negotiations, the European Commission rejected UK calls for an EU-wide migration deal to replace the Dublin regulation, which means migrants must stay in the first safe country they land.

Any EU-UK deal would require the unanimous support of the EU’s 27 member states, which is unlikely given that migration is a hugely divisive issue in the bloc.

Countries such as Italy and Greece, which have borne the brunt of migrant arrivals into Europe, will likely resist moves to return people to the EU, as will the fiercely anti-migrant Hungary.

The overture from Paris and Berlin comes after Sir Keir told gathered leaders at the European Political Community summit earlier this year that the UK would never leave the European Convention of Human Rights after ditching the Rwanda Plan.

At a G7 ministerial conference next week, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper will meet Ms. Faeser, her Italian counterpart Matteo Piantedosi, and the recently appointed French interior minister, Bruno Retailleau.

The government maintains that its red lines have not altered and that neither freedom of movement nor participation in an EU quota system for migrants will return.

James Cleverly, the Tory leadership candidate and shadow home minister, told The Times that "Starmer would do anything to get closer to the EU."

This individual claimed that all immigration restrictions were racist while running for office in a second referendum. The European Union is eager to subjugate Labour.