EU faces uphill struggle to meet Tampere goals

Date: 12/10/00

At last October's special summit in Tampere, Union leaders commited themselves to creating an area of 'freedom, security and justice' for Europe's citizens. John Shelley reports on how much progress has been made in the past 12 months

In smoky gambling dens and backroom bars across Europe this time last year, criminals were holding their heads in their hands and bemoaning the grim future for international crime - or so Union leaders would had have us believe.

At their summit in Tampere, Finland, last October, EU heads of state and government announced measures they hoped would strike fear into the hearts of criminals, providing a vital counterbalance to the advantages law-breakers were enjoying because of the increased freedom resulting from European integration.

The single market had up until that point been a dream come true for criminals, who could use the lifting of customs controls to dodge police across borders and bounce dirty money in an untraceable trail across the Union.

But Tampere was to be the launch of a counter-attack. The summit participants envisaged a Europe where police and customs could operate across borders as effectively as the criminals and where bogus asylum-seekers would not be able to hop between member states until they found a haven.

Twelve months on, the first of these measures are just getting off the ground. So are the law-breakers really quaking in their boots?

Tampere was not, of course, just about combating crime.

EU leaders proclaimed that the purpose of the initiatives was to create a common area where European citizens could cohabit in "freedom, security and justice", wherever they chose to live.

Along with measures to make sure the single market was not a soft touch for criminals, this also meant ensuring that civil law judgements such as divorce rulings would be respected across the Union. The other major strand of the Tampere plan was the development of a common EU asylum and migration policy, a harmonised approach to dealing with refugees and standardised methods for combating illegal immigration.

The task of drawing together these many threads was given to Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner António Vitorino, who tackled the job with his trend-setting 'scoreboard', an unusually easy-to-decipher document laying out who must do what and by when in order to achieve the Tampere goals.

So far, the EU seems to be keeping pace with the targets set down in that paper, with draft legislation coming thick and fast from the Commission.

The member states are also playing their part and the first decisions on Tampere proposals are now being taken. Last month, for instance, justice ministers agreed to give Europol the power to initiate criminal investigations. Member states have also agreed to set up a European refugee fund, although perhaps in a sign of rows to come, an accord was only reached at the last moment after months of diplomatic wrangling about how the cash should be shared out.

Not everyone is convinced this early progress is a sign that things are destined to remain on track and officials concede that with most of the proposals still in the drafting stage, the work done so far has largely been the easy part.

The Commission has never been shy about drawing up proposals, but cajoling member states into agreeing them will prove more of a challenge.

One close observer, British Liberal MEP Graham Watson, chairman of the European Parliament's justice committee, suggests the strain is already beginning to show. "There are strong signs that some things are not working with this process," he says.

Under the Amsterdam Treaty, and uniquely in the area of justice and home affairs, member states share the right to draft proposals with the Commission, which normally bears that responsibility alone. Watson says this is snarling up the process because EU governments - ever on the lookout for ways to score political points - are constantly drafting new plans, each of which then has to be formally considered by their partners.

"What is happening is that ministers in every country keep getting together and saying, 'Right we need an initiative, draft me some legislation'," he says. "There are now something like 35 or 40 individual member state initiatives on the table. This is creating a real log-jam in the policies and a real mess."

Back in their gambling dens, international crooks may be cheering - but they are not the only ones who would argue that delays in implementing Tampere are not necessarily a bad thing. Human rights groups have been protesting against the measures unveiled at Tampere since day one, and far from being reassured as it all moves along, their voices are becoming louder and more shrill.

The jewel in the crown of the Tampere anti-crime measures is a proposal to make court judgements, rulings or orders issued in one country enforceable throughout the Union. Civil rights campaigners say that because the EU set itself such a tight timetable at Tampere, the institutions are trying to push through measures quickly, and this inevitably means a dumbing-down of justice standards to the level of the lowest common denominator.

Imagine, they say, the nightmare of hearing a knock at your door and opening it to find the local police there, summoning you for a trial on the other side of the EU.

Under fast-track extradition procedures, you could be put on a plane without getting the chance to defend your case in your home country first. Then, on arrival, you might be arrested by police, denied access to a trans-lator and put in prison. There, say these critics, you would stay, possibly for months, while you awaited trial because, as a foreigner considered likely to abscond back home, you would be refused bail.

Campaigners say that without proper legislation guaranteeing basic rights, this kind of scenario is exactly what Tampere will allow. "There has been enormous progress in getting together a programme of law and order over the last year but so far there has been absolutely nothing done, except for a few vague noises, on protecting the fundamental rights of citizens," says Stephen Jacobi of the campaign group Fair Trials Abroad.

Organisations fighting for the rights of refugees are similarly horrified by the proposals on migration, saying they are geared towards building up the walls of 'fortress Europe', locking out people who are genuinely fleeing persecution and adding few substantive improvements to the way refugees are treated.

A glimmer of hope in the grim civil liberties picture these groups are painting was supposed to be the much-heralded Charter of Fundamental Rights. This was cited by EU leaders in the Tampere conclusions as a key measure to ensure that the common area has plenty of freedom and justice along with the security.

But member states now appear to have dropped, at least temporarily, the idea of making the charter legally binding and campaigners say a purely declarative statement of rights will do little to counter the very concrete legal powers Tampere will give police and immigration officials.

Tony Bunyan, of civil rights group Statewatch, argues that these failings mean it is time to slow the process down. "We are getting proposal after proposal. The media cannot keep up with it, non-governmental organisations cannot keep up with it and there is no way whatsoever that the public will actually understand what is going on," he says.

The chances of an official decision to take the foot off the pedal, however, are next to none because the Amsterdam Treaty requires justice measures to be brought into effect within five years. With only four remaining, the EU will not have time to stop and catch its breath if it wants to hit that deadline in the important areas.

Many of the real battles are only expected to take place in the next year or so, which means that staying on schedule is going to be very tough, even if lengthy rows similar to those over the refugee fund can be avoided. In the meantime, those criminals who were supposed to be despairing in 1999 can look forward to eking out their crooked living for a few more years.

Major feature. At the October 1999 special summit in Tampere, Union leaders committed themselves to creating an area of 'freedom, security and justice' for Europe's citizens. Author reports on how much progress has been made in the past 12 months.