G6 meeting agenda remains under wraps

Interior ministers from the EU’s six most populous states will meet next week to discuss terrorism, organised crime, integration and illegal immigration. But with one week to go before the meeting, few ­details of the agenda have emerged.

The G6, which was ­created in 2003 and has since met twice a year, has been criticised for being ­secretive and under­mining progress on EU ­justice and home affairs co-operation. The meeting on 25-26 ­October will take place in Stratford-upon-Avon. But the UK Home Office, which is in charge of setting the ­agenda, said it could not disclose details until next week. The German and French interior ministries were also unable to provide ­details.

The European Commission will not ­attend the meetings but Franco ­Frattini, commissioner for justice, freedom and security, has been ­invited to the closing lunch on Thursday. A Commission spokesman said no details of the meeting had been provided.

Topics at the meeting can be controversial. In March, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy proposed introducing an "integration contract" requiring immigrants to learn the language and ­accept the values of their host country, or face being sent home.

Ministers have also agreed, during such ­meet­ings, to improve police cross-border information-sharing with a particular ­focus on DNA, fingerprints and motor vehicle registration data. Co-operation on setting up joint support teams, which would ­respond in the event of terrorist ­attacks, was also proposed.

A UK House of Lords ­report in July said the meetings lacked transparency in that no agenda was made available prior to the meetings, or results published ­afterwards. The report also warned against the meetings becoming ­formalised and taking over from the EU-wide agenda.

"This sets aside the ­community method and excludes the Commission and [European] Parliament," said Sergio Carrera, a research fellow with the ­Centre for European Policy Studies. ­"Issues in particular like ­illegal immigration are something that the EU since 2004 has a lot of ­competence in. This group gets together in a closed group of friends and decides issues of EU relevance."

Sarah Ludford, British liberal MEP, compared the G6 meetings to the negotiations on the Treaty of Prüm, which involved only Germany, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and Italy and may now become a blueprint for EU-wide ­legislation on making pol­ice information available across the Union. "We’re kept out of it, just like the Treaty of Prüm."

Hugo Brady, research ­fellow with the Centre for European Reform, said there was merit in the ­meetings. "Europe is big enough for more than one talking shop. It can be quite a positive thing because of the difficulty in generating consensus on internal ­security issues."

The Commission had no problem with the G6 ­meeting so long as the ­forum did not undermine the EU process, a spokes­man for Frattini said.

Interior ministers from the EU’s six most populous states will meet next week to discuss terrorism, organised crime, integration and illegal immigration. But with one week to go before the meeting, few ­details of the agenda have emerged.