Common guidelines and coordination. The Commission's Green Paper on legal immigration wisely avoids ruffling the Member States' feathers (see this column yesterday and the day before). The Commission, which well knows how sensitive the subjects at stake are, recognises national competencies- such as determining the number of economic immigrants each country wants to receive- and asks questions instead of anticipating the answers. All the same, it is clearly in favour of the idea of common guidelines and sometimes evening community rules on this. Even if it remains national, the decision of a Member State on the number of third-country workers it intends to take onto its employment market will have direct repercussions on all the Member States, due to rights to travel within the Schengen zone, to provide services throughout the Union, to travel from one country to another once they have rights as a long-term resident, and the fallout on the European employment market. The Commission “feels therefore that it is necessary to adopt transparent common criteria and rules which are more harmonised at European level on the admission of economic migrants”. What is the optimum level of harmonisation? The Commission also points out that the Constitution currently under ratification confirms “the right of Member States to set the volume of entries of third-country nationals, from third countries, onto their territory with the aim of looking for employment there”. However, it stresses that a “method of coordination, whereby Member States which apply national quotas keep the Commission informed of the implementation and results of their policies, could be beneficial in assessing the overall needs of the European employment market and could help to implement a community policy on legal migration and a more efficient, better coordinated procedure which would be in the interest of the Member States and the people concerned”. The need to act is thus made quite clear.
Questions. For the rest, the Commission is asking questions. Sometimes it presents them in such a way that you can guess what answer they're looking for; but in general, it's entirely up to the Council, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions, the national and regional authorities, the social partners, the non-governmental organisations, etc, to answer them as they see fit. Should there be an overall legal framework for all categories of immigrants, or specific provisions for certain sectors? What categories of migrants should be considered as priority cases? Could an accelerated procedure be considered if there is a shortage of labour? How could a “community preference” be guaranteed in access to the labour market? Would third-country workers have rights to any level of mobility between the Member States? Should the admission of a third-country national onto the European employment market always be subject to the prior existence of an available job? Would the existence of an “economic need” invoked by a company be enough of a criterion to admit a third-country worker? What regime should be put in place for freelance workers? How, and to what extent, would an immigrant worker be able to change employer or sector? What would his or her social and economic rights be after a certain period of residency in the Union? Other questions relate to the possibility of bringing in special measures to encourage the arrival and movement of “brains”, provisions for returns to the country of origin and possible measures to compensate developing countries for their investment in human capital which then emigrates to the EU.
Integration, an essential dimension. In the Green Paper, just one sentence is devoted to the integration of immigrant workers and their families in host countries; it stresses “the growing importance of national programmes on language training, civic education, information about the fundamental norms and values of the host society”. This is the main question. Some Member States, which had shown an open, generous and welcoming attitude, felt betrayed. A Danish minister said that in his country, the integration policy for Muslim nationals completely failed. The effects of the assassination of Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands by an immigrant who had taken on Dutch nationality could not perhaps be assessed in all its enormity; some studies show that public opinion has been turned on its head, because the principles of tolerance and freedom of opinion- cornerstones of Dutch civilisation- were swept away. I believe that the debate launched by the Commission's Green Paper will not be able to skirt round the question of the integration of immigrant workers. (F.R.)