Dutch presidency hails asylum agreement as its biggest feat

Date: 10/11/04

Dutch diplomats have hailed agreement at last week's European Council over asylum and migration as the biggest achievement of their country's EU presidency so far.

The endorsement of The Hague Programme, a five-year plan for cooperation in justice and home affairs, will alter the basis of decision-making on asylum and migration questions.

It is regarded as the most ambitious step since the 1999 EU summit in Tampere, where the concept of having a "common area" of freedom, security and justice was approved.

From April next year, national vetoes over asylum and clandestine migration will be scrapped, with decisions subject to qualified majority voting instead. The Dutch premier, Jan Peter Balkenende, said the EU would become "more decisive and democratic".

But some analysts stress that the significance of the decision should not be exaggerated too much.

Britain, Ireland and Denmark will retain their opt-outs from EU laws on asylum and migration. And at the behest of Germany, Estonia and Slovakia, unanimity will still be required for the Council of Ministers to adopt rules on legal migration. That could impede the EU from setting quotas for migrants from certain outside countries it allows onto its territory to work or study.

"The Hague Programme is not revolutionary," says Aurore Wanlin from the Centre for European Reform in London. "Economic migration is still a taboo subject. And even if we have more majority voting, there is a risk that every proposal for harmonization is reduced to a lowest common denominator."

Under the programme, member states have also made a commitment to set up joint processing of asylum claims by EU states by the end of this decade. One of the main aims is to prevent 'asylum-shopping', whereby asylum-seekers lodge applications in more than one country.

Dick Oosting of Amnesty International is perturbed that the programme appears to "blur the fine line between cooperation and pressure" towards countries where a large number of asylum-seekers originally come from. For example, the programme alludes to the possibility of linking the amount of development aid poor countries receive to the way they deal with the EU on migration and asylum.

"The fact that asylum is principally a human rights issue seems to be lost amid all the discourse surrounding migration management," added Oosting.

The European Commission has been asked to present an action plan next year, fleshing out how The Hague Programme will be implemented.

"The programme is not yet the final blueprint," said Diederik Kramers, Brussels spokesman with the UN High Commission for Refugees. "A lot will depend on the action plan. But there is room for interpretation at the moment. We have to see to it that protection concerns are not being sidetracked by other concerns."

The Hague Programme: Key Dates

• December 2004: European Commission to present proposals for an EU-database of criminal convictions.
• European border management agency to be set up.
• plan to be unveiled on implementing The Hague Programme; minimum standards for returning rejected asylum-seekers to their home countries to be devised; policy on linking development aid to migration and asylum to be tabled; Commission to present blueprint for legal migration.
• strategy on addressing causes of terrorism to be developed; new scheme for subjecting Europol to greater scrutiny by MEPs; Green Paper on mutual recognition of rulings on matrimonial property.
• Return Fund (for sending failed asylum-seekers home) to be established; biometric indicators to be stored in a central EU database; Commission to publish proposals for supervising the EU's internal borders, including unannounced checks.
• officers in one member state to have greater access to data held by authorities in another.
• processing of asylum claims by EU member states.

Article discusses the Hague Programme, a five-year plan on further cooperation in asylum matters, which was adopted at the Brussels European Council on 4-5 November 2004.

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