EU repatriation plans incur probe by MEPs

Date: 12/12/02

By David Cronin

MEPS will next week challenge the European Commission to state how it will ensure that immigrants forced back to their home countries do not endure ill-treatment.

The European Parliament debate comes on the heels of a recent announcement by António Vitorino, the justice and home affairs commissioner, that the possibility of using EU money to fund forced repatriation of asylum-seekers whose applications have failed is being considered.

Graham Watson, head of the Parliament's Liberal group, said: "The Union and member states must base their policies on respect for fundamental rights. This applies in particular to binding measures concerning the movement of persons, such as those governing voluntary or forced repatriation to countries of origin."

In a question due to be answered by the Commission next week, he asks how those rights can be upheld, especially when large-scale return of immigrants occurs.

Watson has also drafted a report on the EU's "readmission agreement" with Hong Kong. Signed this year, it is the Union's first accord on returning immigrants to a country outside its borders.

Although Watson recommends that his colleagues approve the agreement, he expresses serious reservations about it. MEPs, he complains, were not consulted by the Commission or the Council of Ministers while it was being drawn up. And he is unhappy that it does not explicitly refer to the rights laid down in the primary piece of international refugee law, the Geneva Convention.

Watson notes that the number of Hong Kong citizens entering the EU illegally is small, so concluding an agreement with its government did not present major difficulties. "In other cases, for example Sri Lanka and Pakistan, it is not possible to proceed in this way," he said.

MEPs are set to challenge the European Commission to state how it will ensure that immigrants forced back to their home countries do not endure ill-treatment.