Brussels, 17/11/2005 (Agence Europe) - "Making development aid conditional upon a countries migration policy is not the right answer", said the president of the European Confederation of NGOs for Relief and Development (CONCORD), with reference to the declaration on development policy, to be approved by the General Affairs Council of 21 and 22 November. Various European countries, led by Malta, are insisting that the future declaration on development policy include a new condition, which would basically oblige all countries which receive European aid to repatriate their citizens found living illegally in any country of the EU. Frans Polman says: "it is clear that the European Union must make changes to its common migration policy to prevent situations such as those of Ceuta and Melilla, but giving money to these countries for the purposes of checks on migration, such as border controls, re-admission agreements or detention centres, will do nothing to resolve the problems". The CONCORD President goes on to state that "no consensus at all would be better than having a consensus in such conditions, which promote European interests (...) to the detriment of the poor countries".
A few months ago, the public consultation on the future of the European development policy pointed to a general consensus on the fact that "development must not be subordinated to the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) or the EU's policy on migratory flows" (EUROPE 8982). The European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, for his part, stated that "the development policy should not be used as leverage for re-admission agreements" (EUROPE 8909).