” “Coordination is lacking” “

The General Affairs Council of the Union failed at its meeting on Monday 17 June to reach a compromise agreement on the problem of clandestine immigration. France, Luxembourg and Sweden opposed the adoption of paragraphs which would have introduced the option for the EU to suspend future aid or accords of cooperation not yet stipulated with the countries of origin of immigrants, or the countries through which they transit, in the event of these countries failing to cooperate (or not show any “willingness” to cooperate) in the campaign against illegal immigration. The text of the document examined by the General Affairs Council will now pass to the examination of the European Council in Seville on 21 and 22 June with a view to its eventual final approval. In particular, the veto of France and Sweden was justified by the fact that cooperation in the campaign against illegal immigration represents merely one of the aspects of the EU’s development policy and could not therefore in itself be used to block EU aid and joint efforts in other sectors. “The question of the campaign against illegal immigration – explains Martino Cossu of the Justice and Internal Affairs Department of the Council of the European Union – has represented right from the start a priority of the Spanish Presidency. The Council in Luxembourg tried to define in more diplomatic language the provisions made by the preparatory documents. The basic idea consists of the making EU aid conditional on the effective efforts being made to curb illegal immigration by the authorities of the countries from which immigrants come and the countries through which they pass on their way to Europe”. In the course of the debate, Cossu pointed out to SirEurope, “France and Sweden expressed the strongest reservations on the proposal, to the point of vetoing the adoption of the accord and deferring it to the summit in Seville: according to them, illegal immigration is only one aspect of the foreign policy of the Union and it would not be right to penalize a country by suspending or reducing EU aid to it on account of one aspect only. It seems a punitive approach, also because many of these countries do not even have the resources to crack down on illegal immigration. It would undoubtedly be appropriate, therefore, to provide them with these resources, be they patrol-boats or assistance in airports. But everything needs to be refocused on the central question: the problem is the reduction of poverty and the creation of development, the only way of eliminating the motivations that lie at the basis of the decision to emigrate”. Another crucial problem, in the view of the representative of the EU’s Justice and Internal Affairs Department, is the lack, at the EU level, of “a coherent policy on immigration in general. The lack of coordination between the policy for illegal immigration and that for legal immigration is also a source of concern. On the former more or less everyone is now in agreement; on the second, on the other hand, there are at the present time five or six draft directives on the table of the EU Council, all of them in a situation of stalemate”. Cossu recalls that “there are many legal immigrants who are given little support or protection. Moreover, legal immigration into an EU country has a degree of protection depending on the European country in question: what is lacking is a common platform of rights valid throughout the Union. In such conditions it is difficult to speak of a common and integrated policy for immigration”.