Luxembourg, 15/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - Tuesday's JHA Council was unable to break the deadlock over different issues on the table. They will be taken to the 21/22 November Council, which this Council had as goal to prepare (see yesterday's EUROPE page 11).
Follow-up plan against illegal immigration: the Council debated co-operation with third countries in relation to the fight against illegal immigration. They recalled that the Seville Summit had asked the Commission to present a report in October on the "effectiveness" of available resources in the Community budget for the repatriation of rejected immigrants and asylum-seekers., the management of the external borders and asylum and migration policies of third countries. The Council "stressed the importance" of this request. It also stressed "that the Community budget and national budgets of Member states must provide for adequate financial resources". "Once it has assessed this report, the Council will decide what measures to take".
Candidate countries: the Fifteen approved a declaration by which, from the day of the singing of the accession treaty by a candidate country, requests for asylum from nationals of that country will be regarded as being "manifestly unfounded" and judged by the accelerated procedure, which is already the case between the European Union's Member states.
Dublin Regulation II: the Fifteen has lengthy talks, without reaching agreement, on determining the state responsible for examining a request for asylum. At the end of talks, the Presidency presented new draft compromise. According to this proposal, if the person who lodges the request for asylum has stayed at least 5 months in another Member state, and that it is impossible to determine by what country he entered, then the country where he has stayed 5 months is responsible for examining the request. In the previous draft compromise, the duration was 3 months, and the country in question was responsible even if it was known by what country the asylum-seeker had arrived. This proposal tends to please countries like France, which was clearly opposed to the previous version. Southern countries like Greece, Spain and Italy, on the other hand, a opposed, as this new proposal would amount to their being responsible for the fate of more asylum-seekers, as they are the main countries of arrival for illegal immigrants.
Definition of the status of refugee: there was no agreement on the definition of subsidiary protection. According to the Presidency, ministers agree to waive different reservations in November.
Minimum standards for hosting asylum-seekers: here there was no agreement either. According to the Presidency, the only obstacle to the adoption of the directive on which there was political agreement on 25 April, is a question of wording on access of asylum-seekers to the labour market. Germany called for the decision on this access to be left up to the Laender. Denmark is proposed a compromise along these lines, but the German minister said he could not decide.
The Fifteen decided to return to the working group the question as to whether or not to follow up the proposal of establishing a list of safe countries from which nationals seeking asylum (or people having come through those countries) would be regarded as being unfounded and thus examined in the accelerated procedure. Likewise for the French proposal of systematically stamping passports at Schengen entry points to be able to verify the duration of the stay of people who do not need visas. As we were going to press, the Fifteen had not yet finished their discussions on the return of Afghan refugees, or those on the integration of immigrants staying legally.