UK reaches preliminary deal with EU to access border agency Frontex - Bloomberg

LONDON (Reuters) -Britain has reached a preliminary agreement with the European Union to access its border agency Frontex, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, adding that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak intended to announce the deal next month.

A spokesman for Sunak said negotiations were ongoing and the text of a deal had not yet been agreed.

"Obviously we hope to achieve a deal that works for us and our European neighbours," he said. "I don’t recognise some of the reporting I have seen today."

The spokesman said Britain and the European Commission are in talks about how to deal with the issue of migration.

While Britain has reached bilateral agreements – including a recent deal with Turkey to disrupt people-smuggling gangs and tackle illegal migration – it no longer has returns agreements with the EU since leaving the bloc in 2020.

Asked if the government would like the EU to agree a deal on returning people who have crossed the Channel, the spokesman said: "We want to look at everything at a whole. I don’t want to get into the details of what is being negotiated."

(Reporting by Farouq Suleiman and Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Sachin Ravikumar and Kylie MacLellan)