A plan for outer guards of Fortress Europe

The best way to protect Fortress Europe from the hordes of economic migrants at its gates, the new rationale goes, is to turn states which are the main sources of migrants into frontier guards of an outer circle around the EU.

The strategy has been successful in the accession states of central and eastern Europe. In Poland, for example, part of the accession challenge has been creating an impermeable frontier to the east and ending traditional visa-free access from Ukraine and Russia. You want to be our friend, the argument goes, then you must be a good neighbour to us.

A variation of this strategy for non-applicant states is a key element in today's summit discussion in Tampere on a common EU immigration and asylum system. It is outlined by a high-level working group in a series of five national action plans targeted at Iraq, Morocco, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.

The idea is to break from the traditional approach to immigration, essentially a repressive attempt to deal with those already pressing at the gates or trying to slip in around them. Instead, a more "holistic" and humane approach is to be taken, so the argument goes. This tries to tackle the causes of migration: poverty, oppression or simply the desire for a better life.

A joint paper for the summit from the British, French and Germans does its best to distance the new policy from the demands of the xenophobic far right. "The aim of zero immigration must be rejected, as should that of total freedom of residence," the paper argues.

Yet for all its humanity it is still about controlling the numbers who eventually get into the EU. The idea that a wealthy EU could be considering what more it could do to open its doors to the poor of neighbouring countries is simply not on the agenda.

The essential elements of the new approach are dialogue, co-operation and co-development, protecting human rights, supporting democratisation, rule of law, social and economic development and the alleviation of poverty.

Take Morocco, a particularly good testing ground. Morocco has, according to the action plan, the "strongest" migration potential of north Africa, a population of 29 million expected to rise to 34 million by 2010. There is also the new challenge of clandestine migrants, particularly from Algeria and the sub-Saharan region, crossing Morocco to reach the EU.

Despite immigration restrictions in all EU countries, and substantial repatriations from Spain, the flow has not stopped. In Belgium and the Netherlands the Moroccan population represents 40 per cent and 28 per cent respectively of all non-EU residents; in Spain their numbers have risen from 31,000 to 141,000 since 1990.

Eighty per cent of Moroccan emigrants live in the EU. In France, there are half a million; Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy have around 130,000 each; and Germany has 72,000.

Not only is Morocco dependent on EU aid under the Barcelona Meda process, but to an even greater extent on the remittances of its exiles. Some two million Moroccans living abroad send back the equivalent of 40 per cent of the country's exports, a total of $1,890 million in 1995.

With some 43,000 Moroccan immigrants entering the EU legally in 1997, any cut-off in that flow is likely to have serious repercussions in a country whose annual GNP per capita is still only €1,140 (£897). Unemployment is especially high among the unskilled young; 30 per cent among 15- to 24-year-olds, the most prone to the lure of emigration and the siren calls of Islamic fundamentalists.

At the same time, official EU support brought in about €150 million a year for the last four years under Meda, small beer by comparison with the remittances.

So Rabat has a serious vested interest in collaborating with the EU, and hence its expected willingness to co-operate with an action plan. Among other things, the plan urges it to police its own borders on the EU's behalf.

In return the EU will assist with aid to mitigate the economic effects of the deterioration in the terms of trade, in general economic development, and in the promotion of small businesses in areas most prone to emigration.

It is collaboration freely entered into, of course.

Patrick Smyth can be contacted at 100701.2431@compuserve.com