Action plan on refugees likely to cause rights protests

The European Union is preparing to send immigration officials from four other memberstates to Italy and Greece. The immigration officials - from Germany, Austria, Holland and France - will train local staff and monitor their controls against the stream of Kurdish refugees, mainly of Iraqi origin, attempting to enter the EU.

The EU will also ask Europol to report on criminal involvement in the traffic in illegal immigrants.

The proposals are part of an action plan being drafted by the British presidency in response to concerns at the flow of up to 1,000 refugees a week into the Union, mostly en route through Turkey. They are likely to trigger protests from human rights groups.

Member-states are likely to agree to send additional technical equipment, fund training exchanges and improve the training of visa staff, and to step up pressure on airlines to take seriously their obligation to monitor the legal status of their international passengers.

They will also attempt to speed up agreement on a new computerised fingerprinting system, Eurodac, which it is hoped to use to prevent multiple, subsequent applications for asylum from rejected refugees.

The proposals will go to a meeting of officials today at the secretive K4 committee and then to foreign ministers meeting on Monday week. The latter are likely also to insist on stepping up diplomatic pressure on the Turkish authorities to assist in stemming the flow by easing up on pressure on the Kurds.

That has not been made easier by the war of words with Turkey about its accession prospects to the EU, but officials say there have been significant numbers of recent arrests by Ankara in recent days of traffickers and illegal migrants.

The British action plan urges the "immediate expulsion of persons illegally present on the territories of the member-states insofar as no right to remain exists". But it acknowledges the rights under UN conventions of those fleeing persecution to seek asylum and Italy's problems in allowing many to stay while they appeal an initial refusal.

Many have disappeared from refugee camps into the vast informal networks of the Kurdish immigrant community, slipping across the border into other member-states.

Returning economic migrants to Iraq is not easy and the EU will consult the UN High Commissioner for Refugees about the circumstances under which this might be possible.

The action plan also seeks to ensure that the Dublin Convention on refugees is properly applied. This allows member-states to send refugees back into the country through which they entered the Union, if it can be established, for its decision on their status. Not surprisingly Rome is insisting on a rigorous standard of proof that illegal migrants came through Italy.

Human rights groups have expressed particular concern about the EU willingness to regard Turkey as a safe "third country["] in which refugees, particularly Kurdish ones, may be regarded as safe. Human Rights Watch argues that Turkey's asylum system is seriously "defective". "A strategy aimed at sealing EU borders and pressing Turkey to handle the problem could seriously undermine the rights of refugees to seek asylum," the group argued.

The Green MEP Ms Patricia McKenna, attacking the Eurodac fingerprinting system yesterday, said: "Fortress Europe is using the latest computer technology to erect more barriers against people fleeing from persecution." She warned that the process in effect criminalised refugees fleeing persecution.