Tampere, 21/09/2006 (Agence Europe) - As foreseen, European Internal Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini, who was speaking at the informal Council in Tampere (see related article), again called on Member States to show greater solidarity towards the European countries affected by the massive inflow of immigrants from Africa. “The pressure of illegal immigration on EU Member States of the Mediterranean region has reached an unprecedented level and calls for immediate action”, Frattini said, calling for the countries of the EU to take part in the EU Border Agency (Frontex) missions as a matter of urgency. Once again, however, most EU Member States did not respond positively to the Commission's call. At present, only three States (Italy, Portugal and Finland) are participating with Spain in maritime patrols off the Canary Islands (Operation Hera), where some 25,000 illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have disembarked since the beginning of the year.
A second Frontex operation (Jason) involves six countries and is expected to begin soon, off the Maltese coast. Commissioner Frattini also announced his intention to begin negotiations with Malta on special aid to Libya, which concerns supplementary aid for the southern border. In the short term, the Italian Commissioner is pushing Member States to adopt rules governing the sending of national experts out to states in difficulty. In the medium term, he is calling for the setting up of a permanent Frontex satellite body in the Mediterranean and the creation of a European maritime surveillance network (Eurosur), which will link national systems together (like Spain at a straits of Gibraltar level). To this end, the Commissioner is proposing to increase the Frontex budget, estimated at €21.2 million in 2007 and to use the money in the European funds for external borders more easily (€1.8 billion planned for 2007-13) for emergencies. The German minister for the interior, Wolfgang Schäuble, however, has already warned about limits to German financial solidarity, “The appeal for money from others is always easy” adding, “those who want to resolve the problem should stop asking for money from others”. This was an explicit reference to the little aid received in the 1990s by Germany when it was confronting the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing war in the former Yugoslavia. Nicolas Sarkozy the French minister, absent during the meeting in Finland, failed to comment on this request but underlined on 8 September in Brussels that the Spanish government had not consulted other EU countries before proceeding to a massive regularisation of illegal immigrants, which he regards as being responsible for the current influx of illegal immigrants to the Canary Islands (see EUROPE 9261). Spanish justice minister Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar reacted on Thursday deeming it “simply to be courting popularity to claim that regularisation caused an in-draught”. He added, “those who say that ignore what motivates those who flee from famine, poverty and despair”. Austrian justice minister Karin Gastinger, however, considered that massive regularisation in Spain had sent out the “wrong signal”. “Legalising illegal immigrants as was done in Spain last year is not a solution because it is an encouragement to people in Africa, as we have seen over the last few months”, she said the meeting.
Sea border coordination will also be on the agenda of a ministerial meeting in Madrid on 29 September of the eight countries on the southern border of Europe (Spain, France Italy, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Malta ands Slovenia), then the informal summit in Lahti (Finland) on 20 October). Illegal immigration figures: the number of entries into the EU refused in 2005 was 827,738, with 600,000 of these in Spain alone, particularly in the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. It is no surprise that Morocco is the country of origin of the majority of those refused entry (72% of those refused entry). The countries which caught the most illegal immigrants in 2005 were, in order of numbers caught, Italy, France, Greece and Spain. However, in proportion to the number of inhabitants, the country that is most affected was Malta (6 arrests per 1000 inhabitants).