National Rally President Jordan Bardella has said this afternoon that “the wave of immigration Europe is experiencing today is only the beginning.”

Speaking at the Reform UK party conference in Birmingham, Bardella claimed that citizens of London and Paris “no longer recognize the country in which they grew up”. He added that if both the National Rally and Reform reach office, they “will stop the boats”.

The comments come as Bardella and Reform leader Nigel Farage today signed a memorandum which would “stop the boats forever”. In a copy of the memorandum given to journalists, the two parties pledged that, if they were to come to power in their respective countries, they would commit to the “interception of small boats” and “return to the point of departure those on board”. The memorandum went on to say that when an illegal migrant arrives in the UK from France, they will not have the ability to claim asylum, given that they have “already passed through safe countries”.

The document also criticized the European Convention on Human Rights and declared that it “must not constrain sovereign nations from securing their borders”. Figures published this week show that small boat crossings to the UK are at a six-year low, and that between June and August 102 small vessels had arrived.

Reform UK has been critical of the French government’s handling of the small boats crisis. Lee Anderson, the party’s MP for Ashfield, said last month that the French border authorities in Calais were “waving migrants” onto small boats and towards the UK. Farage has also suggested that the French navy was “allowing migrants” to travel on small boats to the UK and rejected claims by French President Emmanuel Macron that Brexit had caused the crisis.

In August, Reform UK’s Spokesman for Home Affairs Zia Yusuf unveiled “Operation Fortress”, the party’s military-led plan to stop small boat crossings. The plan would put the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines at the center of stopping small boat crossings, with the aim to intercept every vessel. Migrants on the small boats would then be processed in the UK and returned to either France or Belgium.

Today’s comments from Bardella come in the wake of growing cooperation between Reform UK and the National Rally. In 2025, it was reported that Farage and Bardella had met to discuss immigration policy. Afterwards, Bardella told the press that he “hoped Nigel Farage would be the next prime minister” of Britain and that they were “preparing for future cooperation”.

In a press conference after Bardella’s speech this afternoon, Farage also criticized the National Rally’s previous form under founder Jean Marie Le Pen, stating that he was “nervous” of the RN during this period and that it was a party that “he wouldn’t have done an agreement with”. In 2014, while a member of the European Parliament, Farage said he could not ally with the National Rally due to prejudice and antisemitism in the party under Marine Le Pen’s leadership. Today, he suggested that the RN had changed in the years since then.