Brussels, 08/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - Under the Presidency of the Spanish Minister for the Interior, Mariano Rajoy Rey, the Commissioner for Internal Affairs, Antonio Vitorino and Member States Ministers for the Interior and Ministers from ASEM countries (Brunei, China, Indonesia, South Korea, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) met up last Friday for an exchange of views on immigration between Asia and Europe (see EUROPE 6 April page 11). A joint declaration was made on the way in which to manage immigration flows between the two continents and how to fight illegal immigration. This Euro-Asia conference thus marked the very first step towards an EU-Asia partnership on the subject, although concrete measures remain to be taken, some of the participants stated at the end of the conference.
The results of the declaration will be presented at the 4th Asia-Europe Summit in Copenhagen on 22-23 September. In it, Ministers recognise that illegal immigration has become a joint problem for Europe and Asia and are in agreement that the struggle against poverty, and action for development are needed in countries where the problems occur, in order to fight some of the causes behind illegal immigration. Ministers also stressed the need to share strategic information of migratory flows, as well as information on the most common itineraries and traffic networks and establish a contact point network to co-ordinate and prepare meetings between experts from the ASEM partnership and Director Generals from the immigration services. The aim of these meetings would be to collectively examine the level of illegal immigration and detecting forged, fraudulent or falsified identity documents.
Commissioner Antonio Vitorino explained that they agreed on the essential points and were happy that they shared the same analysis, which represented a big step forward in their bi-lateral co-operation. Mr Vitorino observed that immigration from Asia represented a significant number of around 20 million legal and illegal immigrants into the EU. The Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs, Wang Guangya, pointed to the numerous legal and cultural obstacles that needed overcoming in order for Euro-Asian co-operation in immigration to bear fruit and waned that they still needed time to reach an agreement. According to Agence France Press, several countries, including France, believed that the first concrete measure to adopt would be the EU, China and Vietnam's signing of the agreements of the readmission of illegal immigrants. Mr Wang Guangya announced that Peking was ready to repatriate illegal immigrants identified in Europe back to China. Identification is often difficult, particularly in the case of the Chinese, given that there is little information exchanged between Chinese and European authorities, Mr Guangya added.