Complex EU justice and home affairs rules pose dilemma

Date: 24/09/1998

By Simon Coss

THE applicant countries are likely to face some of the toughest cross-examinations of the entire accession process in February when they have to prove they can match up to Union rules on immigration, crime-fighting and drug smuggling.

The EU's justice and home affairs rules were identified early on as one of the areas likely to cause the most headaches during the enlargement talks.

This is due in no small part to the fact that the lawmaking structures in the justice and home affairs field are among the most problematic within the existing Union.

The idea of holding formal negotiations between the Union's justice and home affairs ministries - traditionally the most nationalistic and Eurosceptic of government departments - was only accepted during the 1991 Maastricht Treaty negotiations.

Even then, it was not possible to convince EU governments to agree to pass legislation in this field using the Union's normal procedures, whereby a proposal from the European Commission is debated, amended and finally adopted or rejected by the Council of Ministers and European Parliament.

Instead, it was decided that justice and home affairs legislation would be agreed between governments and all significant laws would have to be ratified by the EU's 15 national parliaments.

Since Maastricht entered into force in 1993, progress in introducing new rules has been very slow.

Only one convention drawn up since then has been ratified. In addition, it is often unclear exactly what has been agreed at ministerial meetings, as lofty statements made in Brussels have a nasty habit of evaporating during the flight home to national capitals.

All of this presents the applicants with something of a dilemma when they are told they have to match up to the body of rules (acquis) on justice and home affairs already agreed by the Union.

“If we had a nice clear acquis in this area, then the applicant states would have something which they could adjust to. Instead, they come to us scratching their heads and saying 'what do you want us to do?',” explained an aide to Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Anita Gradin.

But while the applicants may have a tough job made even harder by all this confusion, there is one area where they are in no doubt that they must make improvements: immigration.

The existing EU member states are terrified that when all ten applicants finally join the Union they will not be able to guard the EU's eastern borders against hordes of illegal immigrants, given that they will be responsible for guarding almost all of the Union's frontier with the Commonwealth of Independent States.

First-wave candidate Hungary alone would be responsible for policing 1,770 kilometres of Europe's external border. Budapest and its neighbours know that convincing the Union they are up to the task will be far from easy.