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EU: First six countries targeted for "cross-pillar" approach totackling migration (feature)

01 January 1999

The Austrian Presidency's "Strategy paper on migration and asylum policy" was disowned by other EU governments and condemned by the whole spectrum of voluntary groups and NGOs from community-based refugee support groups through to UNHCR (see Statewatch, vol 8 no 6). However, it has not been shelved it is simply being pursued by other means.

The strategy paper was first launched at the start of the Austrian Presidency and dated 1 July 1998 - the first day of its office. A revised draft was produced for the Informal Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting in Vienna in October and a further revision took place prior to the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 3-4 December where it was agreed that it would be "a useful contribution to the work of the cross-pillar Task Force" set up on the initiative of the Netherlands to rescue the strategy paper.

Replacing "Fortress Europe"

The Austrian PresidencyÆs Strategy paper indicates the thinking underlying the proposed Action Plans for six targeted countries (see below). It proposes: "a model of concentric circles of migrant policy could replace that of "Fortress Europe".

The "first circle" is the EU, or as the paper puts it: "For obvious reasons, the Schengen States currently lay down the most intensive control measures". The "second circle" is the associated states (central and eastern Europe) who are to be in line with "the first circle's standards". The "third circle" is the CIS area plus Turkey and North Africa where the concentration will be on "transit checks and combating facilitator networks" and "intensified economic cooperation is [to be] linked to the fulfilment of their obligations". The "fourth circle" is "Middle East, China, black Africa" where the EU's efforts are to be to eliminate the "push factors"; that is "the extent of development aid" is to be tied to their cooperation. This is to be in the context of a "global approach" by the EU and "must incorporate world wide all the main regions of origin of immigrants".

The essence of the new Action Plans is that they are to be "cross-pillar". Instead of relying on "third pillar" pressure and arrangements "second pillar" diplomatic and political pressure is to be brought to bear together with the overt use of economic and humanitarian aid as a bargaining mechanism.

The "Strategy paper" says that:

"For instance, economic aid will have to be made dependent on visa questions, greater border-crossing.. guarantees of readmission.."

The Strategy Paper says there needs to be "information campaigns" with:

"the clear, targeted notification of potential immigrants about immigration management measures, which, from past experience, can itself have just as much effect as the actual measures themselves."

In other words setting out the measures in place to stop people entering the EU and to remove them from the EU.

The German Presidency work programme says that it will continue the work started under the Austrian Presidency "on information campaigns in countries of origin and transit concerning the legal requirements for the admission of third country nationals into the Member States". The German Presidency is also pursuing a "coherent policy of countries of origin", where:

"the question of how the cooperation of countries of origin is to be obtained, thus making it possible for expelled third-country nationals to be repatriated."

Fingerprinting the third world

The different versions of the Austrian Presidency's "Strategy paper" contains three different formulations for one of its proposals. In order for third world countries to "guarantee repatriation of the country's own nationals":

States with a particularly high potential of illegal emigrants must be induced to set up effective fingerprint files. (First version, 9809/98, 1 July 1998)

States with a particularly high potential of illegal emigrants must be induced to set up effective fingerprint files, which make it i