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EU: Commission migration paper

01 January 1994

In its new Draft Communication to the European Council and the Parliament, the European Commission sets out a "menu" for comprehensive action to control migration and refugee flows and simultaneously to strengthen the "integration" of non-EU nationals resident in the EU. Its ideology is one first seen in sixties Britain: limit migration (and asylum) to promote good 'integration', and its recommendations are a mixture of harmonising and tightening control via more efficient methods and better information exchange, together with the introduction of minimum standards of due process and a measure of increased mobility for TCNs (Third Country Nationals) living in the EU. These non-citizens currently have no free movement rights, save that proposed by the draft External Borders Convention of three months' visa-free travel in the EU.

The difficulty with the Commission's viewpoint, according to anti-racist and migrant and refugee groups, is that it is tighter immigration controls - the very same sort of measures the Commission wants to see more of - which institutionalises and legitimises racism at every point in the host countries, from policing and criminal justice to schooling and social welfare, and so has a strong and continuing effect on settled black communities there. The policy of harsh controls and generous integration policies does not work because it contains an inherent contradiction, just like the Commission's own report.

Draft Communication of the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on immigration and asylum policies, January, 1994.