Brussels, 25/02/2005 (Agence Europe) - The interior ministers of the EU were reasonably favourable on Thursday to the idea of setting up a reciprocal information and early warning system between the Member States for important decisions in the field of immigration. There was “consensual agreement on the principle of such a system”, said the President of the Council, Nicolas Schmit, after the discussion. European Commissioner Franco Frattini said that the Commission was putting together a proposal to this effect, in the hope that it could be adopted in the first half of the year.
At the Luxembourg informal Council end January, the German and Dutch interior ministers, Otto Schily and Rita Verdonk, criticised the Spanish minister José Antonio Alonso for failing to consult them on the Spanish programme to reconcile the status of between 800,000 and a million people. It was further to this criticism that the Luxembourg immigration minister Schmit and Commissioner Frattini wrote to the interior ministers proposing this kind of information system. During Thursday's debate, the German and Dutch minister welcomed the initiative. The Spanish minister, too, said that he was in favour.
Will it just a case of providing the information, or will one minister's plans be discussed with the others? Nicolas Schmit and Franco Frattini remained cautious. “It is just a step, albeit a considerable one, in the creation of a framework of confidence”, said Mr Schmit, adding that “the aim is to arrive at a common immigration policy, of which we are laying the foundations”.