While Emmanuel Macron has been wowing Washington there's been something of a mini crisis in France. To put it bluntly, the country was
invaded on Sunday, its border in the French Alps breached by a force of around 200 foreigners, who then fought with the police as they advanced on the small town of Briançon
.
The incursion was organised by Italians and Swiss, their number swelled by forty migrants, a fraction of the number who in recent years have used the Alps to cross from Italy into France. In 2016, 315 were intercepted on this arduous route, a figure that last year rose to 1,900. The majority come from West Africa - Senegal, Guinea and the Ivory Coast - although there is also a Paris-based network of Pakistanis who smuggle their compatriots across the border.
One of the Italians told
France24 he participated in the incursion "to express our shock at the failure of the French police to stop the fascists". The 'fascists' were around 100 members of an anti-immigration organisation called Génération Identitaire who, on Saturday, had
erected a symbolic frontier post on the summit of the Col de l'Echelle, six kilometres from the Italian border. Having hired two helicopters at a cost of €30,000 they unfurled a large banner on which were emblazoned the words: "No Way. Border closed. You will not make Europe Home!".
The stunt may have been provocative but the Génération Identitaire activists broke no law, unlike the pro-migrant militants who put two policemen in hospital and escorted into France immigrants who, under the terms of the Dublin Treaty, should have applied for asylum in Italy. Nonetheless, Benoît Hamon, the Socialist candidate in last year's presidential election, has since called for Génération Identitaire to be banned
because they "provoke discrimination, hate and violence".
Comment: From The Guardian: