A senior Belgian police official has demanded the installation of a naval blockade to intercept migrant vessels before they can reach British shores.
Christiaan De Ridder, Deputy Chief of West Flanders Police, made the call following a surge in small boat departures from Belgian coastal towns near the French border.
"We have to stop them before they get to the UK. We have to find a way to stop them on the water," he told the BBC.
"If we could put up a naval barrier so they don't get into French waters, everything would stop."
French authorities typically escort dinghies safely towards British waters rather than intercepting them, despite knowing these crossings are illegal and frequently orchestrated by criminal networks.
This policy has sparked growing anger in Britain, particularly as the UK Government has committed £660million over three years to France to help reduce crossings.
People-smuggling networks have reportedly relocated some operations to Belgium to circumvent promised increases in French patrols.
Migrants departing from Belgian beaches are sometimes collected alongside others from isolated stretches of coastline around Dunkirk and Calais.
Belgian police official, Christiaan De Ridder, has called for a naval blockade to stop migrant crossings to Britain
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Since January, Belgian authorities have detained forty suspected traffickers and more than 360 migrants, with approximately 30 small boat crossings recorded this year.
Such arrest figures are virtually unprecedented across the border in France.
The number of illegal migrants crossing the Channel reached a shocking milestone just days ago, with over 200,000 migrants making the journey since records began in 2018.
Images captured at Gravelines beach near Dunkirk showed migrants boarding a vessel with no French officers visible, despite assurances of enhanced patrols in the area.
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Migrant crossings have now reached over 200,000 since records began in 2018
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Direct intervention by French police remains exceptionally uncommon.
When officers did take decisive action last week by puncturing a migrant dinghy on a beach near Calais, they were subsequently reported to a human rights watchdog.
In the Belgian resort of Middlekerke, roughly an hour's drive from Calais, migrants have been observed rushing through streets towards the beach to board waiting boats.
The Mayor of Dunkirk, Jean Marie Emmery, dismissed the Belgian approach as unnecessary.
Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, he argued legislative reform was the only viable solution.
"We don't need that," he said. "We need a change of the law.
"We need a change in Great Britain and in Europe and in Belgium and then it will stop."