Brussels, 10/08/2004 (Agence Europe) - The European Council is expected in November to launch the second phase of building the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), but Spain feels that the priority in this second phase should be implementing and assessing the instruments adopted over the past five years. The current situation does not make is possible yet to speak of a genuine AFSJ, comments Spain in the introduction to its contribution to the debate. For the purposes of assessing the policy, Spain believes the development of mutual evaluation mechanisms is required, along with assessment of the capacity of the public operators in each Member State to implement the instruments.
Among the priorities of the AFSJ (launched in 1999), Spain highlights the importance of sharing information by interconnecting databases. Spain believes the European police office Europol should be beefed up and European networks created for transmitting information.
Spain also focuses on cooperation to combat terrorism, mentioning the use of Europol, joint investigation teams, the security of air passengers and stemming the funding of terrorism. Spain says it does not oppose the adoption of common rules for the admission of citizens from outside the EU to carry out work, but lays great emphasis on the need for the rules to be highly flexible and respect the needs of the domestic labour market.
Border control of new Member States must be a priority. While the final agreement on the European Border Agency is in deadlock due to disagreement between Spain and the UK over how it would apply to Gibraltar, Spain notes in the document that the Agency could be a useful instrument to enhance co-operation, but 'the objectives assigned to the Agency are not very ambitious'.
Spain seems to share the European Commission's long-term objective of establishing a European border guard.
On asylum, Spain hopes that the European Commission will draft a report with the Council as rapidly as possible, before any further legislation is prepared, on how the current system operates