Brussels, 14/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - The EU15 Home Ministers will have a very full agenda for their Council on Tuesday 15 October in Luxembourg. It will cover a large part of European cooperation regarding asylum and immigration. Few decisions are expected, except perhaps on minimum standards for the hosting of asylum seekers. The meeting will above all allow preparation of the Council of 21 and 22 November, when the Presidency hopes to have several texts adopted including the European plan for the return of Afghan refugees to their home countries.
The Council will begin its work with a public debate on two draft directives on: - minimum norms for the procedure for granting or withdrawing refugee status; - in June the Commission presented a new, less ambitious moulding of this proposal, as requested by Council (EUROPE of 21 June, p.8); - conditions for the entry and stay of third country nationals for study and other reasons, recently presented by the Commission (EUROPE of 7/8 October). We give below an overview of the points on the agenda:
Follow-up of the plan to combat illegal immigration (adopted in February) and the external borders management plan (approved in June). The Presidency hopes the Council will tackle the question of funding cooperation with third countries in order to combat illegal immigration. One Presidency official said the Commission must report on this subject for the next Council. It must ensure that these countries find cooperation an attractive thing, and, since the external relations budget is limited, it will be necessary to "shift" the priorities of cooperation with third countries, he said. The Council is expected, in its conclusions, to restate its commitment to implement these plans and the conclusions reached in Seville. The Presidency will present a note which takes up the pilot projects, networking and joint operations launched over recent months.
Re-entry agreements. The Commission will take stock of progress in current negotiations on re-entry agreements for immigrants in an irregular situation with Hong Kong (whose signature was approved end September), Macao (the agreement should be initialled on 18 October), Pakistan (negotiations have not begun), Sri Lanka, Morocco and Russia. Negotiations with these last two countries are less successful. Those with Ukraine will be initiated early November. The Commission is soon to present proposals of mandate to negotiate such agreements with China, Algeria, Turkey and Albania.
Responsibility for examining asylum requests. Ministers will above all tackle one of the most sensitive points of the proposal of regulation, that of the hierarchy between the different criteria for deciding who is responsible. The Fifteen hope to approve the so-called "Dublin II" regulation in November. It will then replace the Dublin Convention of 1990. The general principle of the Convention and of the regulation is that the State which has played the largest part in the entry or the stay of the asylum seeker (by issuing a visa or not having sufficiently controlled its borders) should have the responsibility of examining the request for asylum, wherever that request may be made. One of the main changes proposed by the Commission compared to the Dublin Convention consists in establishing the rule that the State on whose territory a foreigner has been able to reside in an irregular situation for two months (if the State in question has full knowledge of the fact) or six months (if it does not know) will be responsible for processing the request for asylum.
Definition of the status of refugee. In the follow-up to the informal JHA Council in Copenhagen, discussions will mainly cover the key point of disagreement, alternative protection (EUROPE of 14 September, p.8). To what extent should protection be granted to persons who are not entitled to refugee status but who would, if they returned to their own country, have to face the risk of the death penalty, torture or arbitrary detention? These persons are not protected by the UN Convention on refugees, but by other international conventions. The aim of the discussion on the proposal of directive will not be to determine what rights are opened with this status of alternative protection but rather to reach a definition. Several countries (Belgium, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Ireland and Sweden) have reserves about various points of the article that define situations opening the right to alternative protection.
Minimum norms for hosting asylum seekers. The Presidency hopes the Fifteen will approve the proposal of directive. "Everyone thought the directive was going to be approved at the June Council, until one country blocked on the question of access to the labour market", said one Danish diplomat. The Council had, however, already reached a political agreement during its April session.
Return of Afghan refugees. The Presidency will propose a plan for the return of Afghan refugees, that it hopes to see approved in Council on 21 and 22 November (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.11). The first draft text indicates that the preferred model is that of voluntary return: - Afghans refusing to follow voluntary repatriation may, after a reasonable amount of time, be repatriated by force by the countries that so wish.
The Presidency proposes that operational aid on the ground (hosting refugees in Kabul in a transit centre, training programmes…) be funded by the Community budget. Airline transport would be funded by each Member state, as would any financial aid that each Member state would be free to decide to allocate to refugees.
Long stay residents. The debate will relate to three points of the proposal: 1) are refugees included in its field of application? 2) how long must the stay be to have a right to that more advantageous status? 3) 13 Member states are said to be able to agree to 5 years, Italy would like the threshold to be 6 years, and Greece is firmly sticking to a 10-year threshold; 3) to what extent may Member states demand that third country nationals have taken measures to integrate (language courses, for example)?
Integration of third country nationals. This subject was put forward by the Danish Presidency, concerned with improving its image, especially marked by a hardening of its legislation on immigration. After a conference of experts in July, the informal Council hardly raised the issue mid-September and had postponed it to October. The Fifteen will approve conclusions in which they place emphasis on the importance on integrating foreigners lawfully in the land and undertake to inform each other of their experiences in the field, and each to allocate a national point of contact. The Council will return to the subject later, following a communication in which the Commission will propose a support programme for network of associations and authorities that support the integration of immigrants into society. The Commission proposes that the programme have a budget of 4 million euro a year for 2003, 2004 and 2005 (EUROPE of 12 September, p.11).
Strengthening passport control procedures at points of entry into the Schengen Area. France will raise the issue of the control of the length of stay in the EU by third country nationals no longer subjected to a visa obligation. As most of the time the passports of these people are not stamped on entering the Schengen area, it is very difficult to check whether they have not been residing in the land over and above the authorised 3 months, explains a Presidency diplomat. The proposal would refer in particular to the lifting of the visa obligation for Bulgarian and Romanian nationals. As France has only just submitted this note, it has not yet been discussed by the working group.
List of "safe" countries. Austria will propose that the Council draw up a list of "safe" countries whose nationals would be presumed not to have the right to asylum policy in a Member state. Diplomatic sources tell us that Austria should propose including on this list, clearly aimed to discourage the Roma from candidate countries from requesting for asylum, the twelve candidate countries for accession, Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and the Fifteen. It would like this list to be enshrined in a regulation that would take effect by the end of the year. The Council should foremost debate whether or not to draw up such a list.