EU: Clampdown on "bogus" marriages
01 January 1998
Six months after Home Secretary Jack Straw announced the abolition of the primary purpose rule, which subjected couples to major intrusions into their privacy to prove that they did not marry for immigration purposes, the UK has agreed an resolution at the Council of justice and home Affairs Ministers in December which will subject marriages to EU citizens to rigorous scrutiny. The Council Resolution on measures to be adopted on combating marriages of convenience sets out a number of factors which "may provide grounds for believing a marriage to be one of convenience", such as "lack of appropriate contribution to the responsibilities arising from marriage". Other grounds for suspicion include failure to maintain cohabitation, inconsistency in the couple's accounts of how they met or in other important personal information, and "residence anomalies" in one or other person.
The draft was even more draconian. It would have required routine verification of the residence status of anyone intending to marry, and the authorities power to oppose or defer "suspicious" marriages. Routine verification of marriages would have been a pre-condition of the grant of long-term residence. The preamble to the final resolution disclaims any intention of introducing systematic checks on all marriages, only proposing to investigate those giving rise to well-founded suspicions. But the final text gives power to member states' authorities to perform pre-marital checks on partners.
The resolution requires national legislation to be amended by the end of this year. Clearly, it will need rule changes which will once more result in intrusive questioning of couples. Worse, it could disqualify anyone with any immigration irregularity from living in Europe with a European husband or wife, and the requirement to maintain cohabitation re-enacts at European level the rule requiring battered women to remain in abusive marriages on pain of deportation.
This attempt by the EU to police marriages could thus result in grave injustice and suffering, and signals a return to the poisonous culture of suspicion in the field of family reunion which campaigners and lawyers believed was a thing of the past.
Council resolution 4.12.97 on measures to be adopted on combating marriages of convenience, OJ 97/C 382/01.