Brussels, 31/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Home Affairs Ministers of the Fifteen were quite in favour in Rome on Thursday of the principle of a European border police force, but much still remains to be done. Like Commissioner Vitorino, German Home Affairs Minister Otto Schilly declared after the meeting that one had not to believe that there would soon be a "European police force with its own statute, its own uniform". It is first a question of "gathering the resources of the different national police forces in a spirit of co-operation and co-ordination", he stressed. The topic will be on the agenda of the Justice and Home Affairs Council of 13 and 14 June, and at the Seville Summit on 21 and 22 June. The first project could be police co-operation at airports (see yesterday's EUROPE p. 6). "Immigration will be one of the most important subjects for the European Union in the coming years", declared the President-in-Office of the Council, Mariano Rajoya. Like France's Nicola Sarkozy, many ministers, however, said that they were "not seeking to build a fortress Europe, that could not work anyway". The Danish Minister for Foreign Affairs and immigration, Bertel Haader, declared in an interview with the "Figaro" that he was "in favour of common rules but against the idea of a common force" (Also see EUROPE of 13/14 May, p.16).
The whole question is whether this beginning of a break in the deadlock in alignment of European policies will only concern repressive aspects (European border police force, combating illegal immigration) or also on asylum and legal immigration, and in which spirit. On Friday, the Danish Parliament voted in a very restrictive law on asylum and immigration: no complete social assistance before seven years, much more difficult family uniting (no uniting before the age of 24…). The United Nations High Commission for Refugees "is concerned that the debate in Europe should have considerably heated-up" declared a UNHCR spokesman to journalists in Geneva. Rupert Colville stressed that the issue of refugees was different to that of illegal immigration, and assured that the number of asylum-seekers was half of what it was ten years ago, in full conflict in the former Yugoslavia, or 384,530 in 2001, compared to 675,460 in 1992.