Brussels, 05/07/2005 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in Evian (France) on Tuesday, the home affairs ministers of the five large European countries of the G5 pledged to take concrete measures to go faster or further than the Member States. The home affairs ministers of France, the UK, Italy and Spain, in the absence of their German counterpart Otto Schily, who was in Berlin for a pre-election meeting of his party, were meeting for the eighth time since their first meeting in Jerez in May 2003.
The fight against illegal immigration was at the centre of their talks, with the decision to carry out rapid expulsions of illegal immigrants by joint charters (there already exists a European decision encouraging joint expulsions; the Commission is putting together a detailed proposal on laying down minimum binding joint standards), to analyse and toughen up family reunification rules (a highly controversial European directive is to enter into force on 3 October), and to speed up the use of biometric data in these applications (planned with the European Visa Information System). They also agreed to speed up exchanges of information (a priority of the Hague Programme 2005-2009).
The European Commission has always looked with a somewhat sceptical eye on these side meetings of the five largest Member States. "When the Member States work together, this is very welcome, as long as they are working within a European perspective", observed the spokesperson to Commissioner Franco Frattini, who is in charge of Justice and home affairs issues, before commenting that on most of these subjects "either there is legislation already in place, or proposals called for by the Council are planned".
Nicolas Sarkozy, who returned to the French Ministry for the interior one month ago, and who was usually absent from meetings of the Justice and Home Affairs Council of all 25 Member States when he previously occupied this post, said in Evian that he would like Poland to join the club of five.