Luxembourg, 13/10/2005 (Agence Europe) - Discussions of the dramatic turn of events facing the clandestine immigrants turned back from Ceuta and Melilla was one of the key moments of the 12 October Justice and Home Affairs Council in Luxembourg. As promised, Commissioner Franco Frattini told the EU25 ministers about the outcome of the Commission's technical assessment mission (see EUROPE 9041) to the Spanish enclaves. According to the Justice, Freedom and Security Commissioner, the mission confirmed the sheer scale of the crisis and that the EU had to take urgent action. UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke, President of the Council, told reporters that Member States were rallying behind the European Commission's desire to take measures to deal with the tragedy (see other article following the debate at the European Parliament).
The situation does not seem to be improving, with the Spanish authorities reporting that some 20,000 immigrants were waiting in Algeria to travel to Ceuta and Melilla, and a further 10,000 in Morocco. At the JHA Council, Spanish justice minister Juan Fernando Lopez Agular hoped energetic action would be taken by Morocco and the EU, while Moroccan interior minister El Mostafa Sahel said a few days ago that Morocco had to be given a genuine Marshall Plan by Europe and good understanding of sub-Saharan African countries, to better manage the migration issue. The Moroccan authorities are under pressure to stop illegal immigrants arriving at Ceuta and Melilla from sub-Saharan Africa and are still sending back hundreds of people travelling through Morocco to try and reach Europe. European sources point out that Moroccans want the EU to put more money on the table because they don't want to have to check the borders for free any more.
Commissioner Franco Frattini said the European Union was prepared to step up its cooperation with Morocco, noting that a 'consortium' had been set up on 3 October to examine action the EU can take to help Morocco. Alongside the EUR 40 million already earmarked for Morocco for border control activities, Franco Frattini announced that before the end of the year, the Frontier Agency would train border control officers on the Spanish-Moroccan border. A new EUR 15 million package would be agreed for Morocco in 2006 as part of the MEDA programme, and the EU would help Morocco combat human trafficking, producing genuine prospective slaves, as European sources put it.
Stressing the need for an overall approach, Franco Frattini said the EU must develop a strategy for dealing effectively with illegal immigration, accelerating negotiations on readmission agreements with Morocco while intensifying dialogue and cooperation with Morocco, Algeria and the countries the immigrants hail from. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, also called for the international community to respond to the scale of the problem, highlighting the key role Europe had to play in this. The events at Ceuta and Melilla are symptomatic of a phenomenon for which we need an appropriate response, warned the former Portuguese pm, but this 'disease' required much wider action. Guterres said Europe was, and must remain, a continent of refuge. Franco Frattini said the EU was prepared to send a mission to assess the needs of sub-Saharan African countries from where he said 95% of the clandestine immigrants trying to cross the border at Ceuta and Melilla hail from. French town and country planning minister Christian Estrosi said 'their problems are our problems', adding that if the three problems were not dealt with together (country of origin, transit country and country of destination, Ed.) then nothing would be settled.
The EU calendar for the end of the year includes a number of meetings where immigration will feature, like a meeting between the EU and Algeria in December, a meeting on ½ December with the African Union to look at illegal immigration and human trafficking (see EUROPE 9047 on the statements in Brussels by the President of the African Union Commission, Alpha Oumar Konare). These issues will also be discussed by the EuroMed partnership and the Barcelona Summit celebrating the tenth anniversary of the EuroMed Partnership in November.