ITALY: Interior ministers of the EU's five major powers have agreed on fingerprint identikit passports for EU citizens but have disagreed over setting up asylum transit camps outside the union writes Paddy Agnew in Rome.
Speaking after the meeting in Florence, host minister Mr Giuseppe Pisanu of Italy said he and his colleagues from Britain, France, Germany and Spain had agreed to back proposals for the introduction of high-tech digital passports that could see all EU citizens routinely fingerprinted "before the end of 2006".
Such passports are expected to contain fingerprint and face recognition data embedded on microchips and, in so doing, would comply with US anti-terrorist security demands for visas purposes.
No such agreement was forthcoming on the Italo-German proposal, first aired in August, to set up holding camps in transit countries such as Libya and Tunisia for EU-bound migrants and refugees.
Explaining the proposal two months ago, the EU's incoming Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner, Mr Rocco Buttiglione, had spoken of the need for the EU to draw up a convention that would deal with the "time bomb" of immigration, arguing that such transit camps would separate potential criminals from potential workers.
While Italy, Germany and Britain are in favour of the idea, both the French Interior Minister, Mr Dominique de Villepin, and his Spanish counterpart Mr Antonio Alonso, expressed grave reservations yesterday.
Mr de Villepin called the proposal a "false good idea that will create more problems than it will solve", while Mr Alonso commented: "There are fears that these camps could become places where human rights would not be respected. We have not found a solution to the fundamental questions, namely - who ends up in these centres? Who is looking for political asylum? Who is fleeing poverty? And what do the host countries think?"
At least a partial answer to Minister Alonso's final question came in the columns of Italian daily Corriere Della Sera yesterday by way of an interview with the Libyan Prime Minister, Mr Shoulari Ghanem, who said: "It does not seem to us a good idea to put illegal immigrants into camps in certain countries.
"You must instead help them to remain where they are and do something about creating jobs."