A French court rejected yesterday an attempt by Channel tunnel operator Eurotunnel to close a refugee camp it alleged was a hub for illegal immigration into Britain, a judicial source said.
The ruling came a day before the British Home Secretary, Mr David Blunkett, meets his French counterpart to demand action on the Sangatte camp, where some 1,600 refugees are housed a short walk from the French tunnel terminal near Calais.
Eurotunnel had asked the administrative court in Lille to close the camp, from where it said refugees hoping to stow away on trucks and trains launched nightly raids on its site, costing it millions of euros in added security and disrupted business.
The source said the court turned down the company's request for an immediate suspension of the Red Cross-run camp ahead of a more thorough judicial review on its future that is expected to take several months.
A Eurotunnel spokeswoman in Paris said it would issue a statement later with its reaction to the ruling.
Eurotunnel accused France during the hearing of "passivity" and turning a blind eye while international gangs used the camp as a base to smuggle people into Britain.
"The French state has allowed a veritable hub for illegal immigration to get up and running at Sangatte," said a Eurotunnel lawyer, Mr Jean-Marc Boivin.
He argued that the private sector provided the some 100 billion French francs ($14 billion) needed to construct the tunnel linking Britain to the continent only after inter-state treaties had been signed guaranteeing the tunnel's security.
"Each should fulfil its role, then, the state should ensure enough security to allow fluid and continuous traffic," he said.
Last month there were 6,500 arrests around the French terminal as refugees from the camp made repeated bids to break into it, he said.
French government officials told the court the blame lay with Britain's relatively liberal asylum law which created the picture of an "El Dorado" for impoverished immigrants.
"Sangatte is no three-star hotel," Ms Claire Daval, lawyer for the prefecture of the Pas-de-Calais region, told the court of the makeshift hangar in a field originally requisitioned from Eurotunnel in 1999 to house several hundred Kosovo refugees.
"It so happens that there is more flexible (asylum) legislation in England. It's an El Dorado because the illegal immigrants are less likely to be deported," she added.
The court was shown film of the camp, less than two miles from the Coquelles tunnel terminal on the French side and currently home to about 1,600 Kurdish, Iranian and Afghan immigrants. The images revealed the extent of the increasingly bold nightly attempts by many of the asylum seekers to breach tunnel security and cross into Britain illegally aboard trains or on the lorries using the Eurotunnel service.
The British government is under intense pressure from opposition parties and the media to prove it is no "soft touch" on asylum.
France is assessing other possible "overspill" sites which could take the burden off the heavily over-crowded Sangatte, but has stressed these would be much smaller and that there were no plans for a second camp on the same lines as Sangatte.
Mr Blunkett will discuss the refugee crisis with his French counterpart, Mr Daniel Vaillant, at talks in Paris today.
But he is expected to turn down a French request for British police to help the tunnel security effort on the French side, insisting that border security in France is purely a matter for the French police.