Scheveningen, (Netherlands), 30/09/2004 (Agence Europe) - German interior minister Otto Schily insisted on Thursday that the European Union had to deal with the question of illegal immigration and asylum outside its borders. He informed journalists in a backdrop to the Informal Justice and Home Affairs Council in Scheveningen that either they waited till the problem arrived here or they took pro-active action. On Friday the Council will be examining the future of European asylum and immigration policy. Schily did not provide any details for his proposals, which have provoked a lot of interest, given that they mention interception at sea of illegal immigration candidates heading for the EU and the setting up of camps (EUROPE 29 September). He simply got rid of the most radical aspects of the British prime minister's proposal on the same theme last year. He decided that sending people who had reached EU territory to camps outside the EU, while examining their requests, would pose too many problems. Schily was no more forthcoming the day before when speaking at the German parliament. It remains to be seen if he will go further on Friday on the general declarations calling for the EU to reflect on the actions in this sense, in the knowledge that the Greens, which make up the majority government in Berlin, does not appear to agree with him.
The president of the public freedoms committee at the European Parliament, Jean-Louis Bourlanges, made a contribution at the Council saying that the setting up camps (for processing asylum requests) was not compatible with fundamental rights as he had indicated in the press. He believes that such camps would be unacceptable if they were not under the jurisdiction of the EU or Member State, which appeared to him to e impossible.
According to Amnesty International, as expressed by Daphné Bouteiller from its European office, everything in the Blair proposal is unacceptable. While waiting for a concrete proposal, Amnesty is afraid of a "humanitarian alibi" for a policy that claimed to help asylum seekers but which closed down their access to the EU even further. Nevertheless, "we cannot day no to everything, because it is true that there is a problem".
The Ukraine, mentioned by Austria as a possible site for creating a refugee camp, expressed its surprise in a press statement and "utterly rejects any speculation concerning these questions).