Preparatory debate. Four years after a first fruitless attempt, the European Commission has relaunched the debate on an EU legal immigration strategy (see our bulletin of 11 January, p.12). It didn't present any proposals; past experience having taught caution, it decided instead to submit to the Member States, other institutions and civil society a Green Paper, which was in no way a programme but which “pinpoints the stakes” and reviews “the possible options”. Interested parties are invited to react by 15 April, and a proposal can be presented towards the end of the year, if the results of the debates justify this. When asked why he is so hopeful for a positive result, the new Commissioner in charge of this dossier, Franco Frattini, replied that the 20001 draft had not been preceded by a preparatory debate involving political forces and economic and social circles. What was missing in 2001 has been written in this time, and this is what is needed, because at the moment there is no real dialogue, no deliberation between the respective positions and arguments. It is more like an exchange of insults.
The right of veto subsists. In governments, there is still a certain mistrust, a mistrust of each other and of any initiative the Commission might come up with. But we must not conclude from this that the whole of the project on the area of freedom, security and justice is in danger. Quite the contrary; I feel that the project in itself and progress already made towards it, or underway, constitute one of the most startling and clear-cut results of the current phase of European integration, and one of the most valid arguments to counter the idea that Europe is stumbling along like a blind man. The “Hague” programme, which was approved by the European Council on 5 November (reproduced in Nr. 2384/2385 of our EUROPE/Documents series), did not go down as well as I for one thought it deserved to, with the media, the general public and political commentators. Citizens' security has for years been one of the main concerns of public opinion, and this goes hand in hand with freedom and justice. The balance between the three elements is confirmed and reinforced by The Hague programme: ensuring respect for fundamental rights, setting the concept of European citizenship in stone, managing the external borders of the Union, regulating migratory flows, lessening the terrorist threat, fighting organised crime, bringing in mutual recognition of decisions civil and criminal, developing a common asylum regime, and respecting the status of refugees. Within this extremely broad context, the legal immigration aspect, or “economic immigration”, is lagging behind for two reasons: a) the differences of opinion when the project was looked into in 2001; b) on the “asylum and immigration” aspect of the dossier alone, there are no plans to move to majority voting for Council decisions. Our readers will be aware that Germany, supported by Austria, Denmark, Greece, Estonia and Slovakia (plus various other countries which didn't need to take the floor) managed to ensure that the unanimity rule will be kept.
Imbalance. Under these conditions, with the right of veto still in place, if the Commission had presented a new, well-defined draft, the result would have been easy to predict: rejection once again. This is why it is embarking on the debate with the hope of agreeing on sufficiently consensual guidelines, and from the start it rules out various options which were unacceptable to certain Member States. In particular, it “fully recognises that decisions on the number of economic migrants to be admitted (…) should be left up to the Member States”. According to various governments, community rules or strategies are not needed; they feel that this is an area to be left in the hands of the national authorities, full stop. In The Hague programme, legal immigration merits a short chapter of some fifteen lines, which recognises the importance of this for economic development and for reinforcing the knowledge-based economy, but carefully avoids laying down institutional competencies. The Commission, however, was invited by the heads of government to present an action plan, because it is hard to deny the need for harmonised guidelines and rules. Currently, the EU's asylum and immigration policy is unbalanced: there are measures only to fight illegal immigration, and any “positive” policy is conspicuous by its absence. It is absolutely vital, however, especially in view of the ageing population. Mr Frattini's initiative, therefore, is entirely justified. Its content and the nature of the debate which is getting started merit a few comments. I'll come onto that tomorrow. (F.R.)