The UK sanctioned Balkans-based gangs and financiers who it said facilitated small boat crossings across the English Channel.

The UK Foreign Office said the sanctions, which include asset freezes and travel bans, targeted criminal gangs involved in "illegal migration to the UK."

The sanctions came as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosted European leaders at a Western Balkans summit to discuss migration and economy.

Starmer under pressure to tackle irregular migration

Starmer has made repeated promises to "smash the gangs" ferrying people across the Channel.

More than 35,000 people have crossed the Channel this year. By the end of the year, that figure may surpass the record of about 45,774 known crossings in 2022.

Data collection on Channel crossings began in 2018. There are many others who arrive on a visa in the UK and then put in an asylum claim.

But the figure on Channel crossings has steadily increased over the years and the situation is now seen as an issue emblematic of wider anxiety that the asylum system is not working.

Crossing the Channel on small boats is a dangerous journey that has cost many lives, with many having died while attempting to cross the Channel. 

There's also pressure on Starmer to stymie the rise of Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti-immigration Reform UK party.

What Starmer said about punishing criminal gangs

"There’s a criminal route through the Western Balkans bringing illegal migrants to the UK, and we’re determined to shut it down by working with European partners,"  Starmer said at the summit.

Starmer's center-left government imposed sanctions on members of what it described as a Kosovo-based "organized crime group responsible for producing false documents and supplying them to criminal gangs."

It also sanctioned a man it said was the leader of a Croatian gang supplying false Croatian passports to Balkan gangs.

Edited by: Roshni Majumdar