Italy urges Community action on justice and internal issues

Date: 28/03/1996

By Rory Watson and Ole Ryborg

ITALY is preparing to set its stamp on the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference by going to the Turin summit armed with a detailed blueprint designed to breathe new life into the fight against organised crime and illegal immigration.

The presidency plan for a radical overhaul of the secretive and unwieldy system established by the Maastricht Treaty for agreeing common approaches to justice and internal issues will be examined at the opening negotiating session on Monday after this weekend's formal IGC launch.

In 30 pages of confidential submissions, Italy argues for more democratic control over sensitive issues such as visa and asylum policy, and advocates hefty pruning of the list of justice and internal policy issues currently dealt with under the intergovernmental 'third pillar' of the treaty and thus subject to unanimity.

The far-reaching proposals will be followed by an equally ambitious agenda to reform other key areas of the treaty. The Italian government wants to “correct the unanimity rule” which leads to frequent foreign and security policy deadlocks, and introduce more flexible procedures.

Rome has also announced moves to introduce majority voting in the sensitive areas of taxation and environmental policy, and extend EU powers into new areas such as energy, tourism and civil protection.

The EU presidency rejects the idea of a minimalist IGC and insists the Union must prove it is “a political, intellectual and human adventure” fully involving the peoples of Europe. That involvement will largely depend on the Union's ability to tackle issues of direct interest to the electorate such as crime.

Rome calls for eight categories of policy - visas, asylum, external frontiers, third country immigrants, free movement of legally resident third country individuals, drugs, fraud and customs cooperation - to become areas for Community action. The switch would ensure a greater role for the European Commission, more majority voting, closer democratic scrutiny through the involvement of MEPs and the possibility of judicial review in the European Court of Justice.

The proposals are a serious attempt by Rome to ensure the lengthy IGC negotiations avoid the abstract realm of rhetoric and focus on concrete issues.

But their detailed nature at such an early stage in the negotiating process could harden national positions and backfire - much as Dutch plans for a more federal Europe caused a political storm during the 1991 Maastricht negotiations.

The UK insists that judicial and interior policy is too bound up with national sovereignty to allow any change to the current system of unanimous intergovernmental cooperation.

But crucial support for reform came this week from Germany, which has made improved internal security for EU citizens one of its main IGC priorities and has stressed the need for strengthened police cooperation, EU-wide action on immigration and visas and tougher measures against fraud.

As well as advocating the 'communitarisation' of key aspects of justice and internal policy, Italy has suggested the Schengen Convention abolishing internal EU borders should be incorporated into the new treaty.

The existing list of nine areas of common EU interest would also be extended to cover greater alignment of crime fighting policies and the treatment of children when cross-frontier marriages end in divorce.

The presidency papers recommend abolishing the secretive K4 committee which prepares third pillar decisions, arguing their work should be entrusted to EU ambassadors and their deputies in Brussels.