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Euronews (27 July 2017)

Emmanuel Macron has had enough of seeing migrants sleeping rough on the streets of France.

In Orleans, the French President attended a citizenship ceremony, which saw the leader propose a new way to stem the flow of migrants into Europe.

At the event, in which several refugees were granted French nationality, Macron said he wanted to see “emergency accommodation” erected in certain “hotspots”, where asylum seekers can be processed “with dignity”.

He took to Twitter to express his unrelenting support for migrants, saying he would be “uncompromising on the right to asylum”.

“Those in danger must be welcomed,” he wrote.

It is in Libya that such centres, which the leader estimated would be ready “by summer”, are so desperately needed.

He said there are currently between 800,000 and a million refugees stranded in the North African country, hoping to get into Europe.

According to Macron, the creation of such “hotspots” would stop people not eligible for asylum from “taking crazy risks”, which he said was fuelling the rise in people smugglers, and thus funding terrorism.

The United Nations says that more than 110,000 migrants from northern Africa and the Middle East have made the perilous journey across the Mediterranean to Europe so far this year.

It estimates that more than 2,300 people have drowned or are missing.