Germany backs single policy on EU immigration

Germany joined France and Britain yesterday at a meeting of EU justice ministers in an initiative aimed at ensuring next week's Tampere summit takes a major step to creating a common European immigration and asylum system.

The timing of the initiative, the day after an anti-immigrant party made strong gains in Austria, was unfortunate, but ministers made strenuous efforts to deny that the tone of the summit would be "repressive" and to distance themselves from the far right's demands.

Warning of the dangers of xenophobia, the three countries' draft declaration for Tampere said that where such views existed, "this opinion must be enlightened: the aim of zero migration (and even more so of sending back legally resident foreigners) must be rejected, just as should that of total freedom of residence which results from the same unrealistic approach".

The declaration insists on the "absolute respect for the right to asylum" which has to be clearly distinguished from immigration.

The commitment of ministers to a common system to end the practice of "asylum shopping" was strongly welcomed by the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue. Ireland received 1,000 applications for asylum last month.

He said he was also particularly pleased by the strong desire to see common action agreed at the summit against international organised crime, specifically money laundering.

Mr O'Donoghue noted that Commission proposals to put a new onus on auctioneers and lawyers to notify the authorities of suspicious cash transactions by their clients reflected his own declared intentions.

Ireland's experience with the Criminal Assets Bureau was also of interest around the Union and has been cited as a useful model in a study by an OECD working group, he said.

The draft declaration on immigration and asylum attempts to balance between what the German Minister for the Interior, Mr Otto Schily, referred to the "push and pull" ingredients of the problem. On the one hand, member-states will work to ease the flow by supporting anti-poverty, employment and training programmes as well as information campaigns aimed at discouraging illegal migration.

They will also encourage states like Morocco to end their generous visa regimes which allow nationals from other states to pass through them into the Union.

On the other hand, the memberstates will collaborate in setting minimum standards for the treatment of both legal immigrants and asylum-seekers in terms of procedures, welfare entitlements, accommodation and access to work. Member-states will, however, preserve the right to determine the numbers taken in.

The draft declaration also insists that "foreigners have responsibilities as well as rights and they have in particular the obligation to respect and share the laws which exist in Europe both in private life and social life".

Asked by journalists what this meant, Mr Schily replied: "I say in particular to the Islamic people in our own country that it is not possible to exercise their religious practices when it is at the expense of our constitution." Integration was not a question of unilateral taking but a bilateral giving and taking, he said.