Immigration, asylum and Maastricht (1)
01 January 1991
Immigration, asylum and Maastricht
artdoc February=1992
Why is Douglas Hurd so fervent in his refusal to allow
immigration and asylum to come within the province of the
European Community? And why does Chancellor Kohl want the
opposite? Statewatch analyses the history of European cooperation
on immigration and asylum and looks at the factors pressing on
member states.
Although the Single European Act of 1987 committed all EC member
states to abolish internal borders by 1 January 1993, it left
immigration policy to member states' own governments, leaving
harmonisation of policies vis-a-vis immigration and asylum to
inter-governmental agreements. This is because it has always been
seen as an aspect of policing - of control of people entering a
country and inside it. While these issues can be made the subject
of cooperation on the ground, governments do not always want to
expose them to the scrutiny of their own national parliaments,
let alone the European Parliament. Thus, the TREVI group of
Ministers, set up in 1976 to deal with `terrorism, radicalism,
extremism and violence', comprised Home Affairs ministers from
the Twelve, together with their senior police and security
chiefs, but outside the remit of European institutions. By 1987
it had expanded its brief to take in `policing and security
aspects of free movement', including immigration, visas, asylum
and border controls. Its meetings and conclusions are
unpublicised, and deal with practical aspects of police, customs
and immigration service cooperation. Another example of the
inter-governmental approach is the Schengen Accord. Signed in
1985, it committed signatory states, who were at that time just
five - France, Germany and the Benelux countries - to working out
measures to compensate for the abolition of internal borders in
the fields of policing and immigration. The Schengen
Supplementary Agreement, signed in 1990 by the original five
countries, and later by Italy, Spain and Portugal, sets out those
measures in detail. They cover the criteria and procedures for
the issue of visas, the strengthening of external border
controls, measures for dealing with asylum-seekers who have come
through another Schengen country, penalties for transport
operators bringing in undocumented and falsely documented
passengers, the setting up of computerised information exchange
systems on refugees, `undesirables' and criminals, together with
a host of other measures on immigration, internal controls and
policing. The UK says it will not join Schengen Agreement
because, unlike the TREVI group, it starts with the abolition of
internal border controls, which the UK will not accept, arguing
that this will allow access to Britain for terrorists, criminals,
drug traffickers and illegal immigrants.
The Ad Hoc Group on Immigration is another inter-governmental
forum, comprising the same Home Affairs ministers as the TREVI
group. It was set up in October 1986 to `end abuses of the asylum
process'. It was this group which, in April 1987, agreed to
sanctions on transport operators bringing in undocumented asylum-
seekers, and to a procedure for limiting asylum requests to one
country. Britain had already brought in fines for airlines in the
previous month. In 1990 the Ad Hoc group produced the Dublin
Convention, which limits the rights of asylum-seekers by deciding
which country is responsible for processing his/her application,
thus allowing only one application. The Convention also sets up
a system of information exchange on `migratory movements', and
on individual asylum-seekers.
European institutions did not enter this picture until 1988,
when the Council of Ministers set up a Group of Coordinators to
oversee the work of TREVI and the Ad Hoc Group. The Group of
Coordinators set out the tasks of the inter-governmental bodies
in securing the borders of Europe and ensuring internal controls
in the Palma Document of 1989.<