The European Council discussed and approved a document entitled “Reinforcing liberty, justice and security in the EU”. The document is intended to lay the foundations for future EU policy in the specific fields of asylum, immigration, frontier controls and the fight against terrorism. As far as immigration is concerned, the key principles of future policies will be two: crackdown on illegal entries and management of legal flows, on the one hand, and fair distribution of responsibilities and costs between member states, on the other. The heads of state and of government made an appeal to “prevent new losses of human lives”. On matters of terrorism and security, division remains between the various governments: in the absence of any real common action, the emphasis is being placed instead on the exchange of information and the pooling of judicial data banks: these will be accessible to the intelligence and public security services of member states from 2008. The document has been subjected to harsh criticism because it was unable to overcome national interests in some key sectors of immigration policy.
