EUROPEAN DIARY:THE PICTURESQUE town of Cannes on the French Riviera, more commonly associated with Hollywood stars and movie producers, rolled out the red carpet for European ministers of justice and the interior yesterday. JAMIE SMYTHreports
At the Palais des Festivals, which offers stunning views of the harbour and some of Europe's most exclusive hotels, ministers gathered to agree a common EU approach to immigration and asylum.
Armed with statistics estimating there are eight million illegal immigrants in the union, the ministers debated a new draft European pact on the issue.
Drawn up by France, which holds the EU presidency, the pact is a key priority for president Nicolas Sarkozy, who has made controlling immigration a central plank of his own administration.
He insisted last week that illegal immigrants without the right papers should be sent home, warning that if EU states accepted everyone who wanted to come, it would destroy Europe's social pact and "everything would explode".
The pact aims to toughen and harmonise procedures for dealing with illegal immigrants and asylum seekers by introducing more effective expulsion policies, tightening border security, and signing agreements with countries of origin to enable easier repatriation of illegal immigrants.
It invites EU states to become more selective about the migrants they accept while asking them to adopt more ambitious policies to help integrate existing immigrants.
The pact also aims to give political impetus to successive declarations made by EU leaders about the need for more co-ordinated action on immigration. The issue has featured on the agenda of almost every European Council since the flow of Africans crossing the Mediterranean became a flood in mid-2005.
Television footage of malnourished African immigrants arriving in rickety boats at Spanish and Italian holiday resorts - some of whom died during the trip - has drawn attention to the two million migrants who enter the EU every year.
Many migrants enter the EU legally and provide a valuable source of labour to their host countries. Some enter using temporary visas and then overstay their welcome and melt into the black economy. Thousands of others cross into the EU illegally to find work, while some people who face persecution in their home country or are fleeing wars claim asylum.
They all face a patchwork of different national laws and procedures, depending on where they arrive.
Under the Dublin Convention rule, an asylum seeker's claim is evaluated by authorities in the first EU state they arrive in. This has a huge impact on their likelihood of being accepted as a refugee, with Sweden, for example, granting 80-90 per cent of Iraqis asylum while Greece has granted virtually no Iraqis the right to asylum.
Illegal immigrants also face radically different treatment from national authorities depending on the EU state where they are discovered. Spain and Italy both engaged in massive regularisation programmes recently, providing millions of illegal immigrants with the right to live and work in the EU. But other states such as Britain regularly detain and deport illegal immigrants.
Integration policies across the EU are many and varied. Some EU states such as Britain and the Netherlands have introduced language and culture tests to ensure immigrants adapt to the national culture. Many central and eastern European states do not have integration programmes.
EU ministers gave their broad backing to the pact yesterday, with Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern echoing comments from fellow ministers about the need to address immigration concerns.
"I think Ireland, given the fact that we, like other European countries, have issues in relation to asylum, we are favourably disposed to the proposals that are on the table," he said.
Spain, which faced criticism from France over its past decision to regularise 700,000 illegal immigrants, also agreed to back the pact after references to the issue were watered down and a reference to migrants viewing Europe as an "El Dorado" was deleted from the draft text.
France had already agreed to delete references to the most radical proposal in the pact - to introduce "integration contracts" whereby migrants would be forced to engage in language and cultural training.
Several non-governmental organisations have criticised the pact for focusing too much on tough measures to prevent immigration while failing to adequately address human rights.
Others, such as the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), have noted that there is nothing dramatically new in the pact and predicted that EU states would continue to lead policy in the area rather than the EU.
"Issues of immigration and asylum go to the very core of a nation state and ministers tend to do little in the way of reversing that," said ECRE secretary general Bjarte Vandvik.
"I'm afraid that could happen again with this pact."