TreviEuropol & immigration (report and feature)
01 January 1993
Report on the EC Immigration/Trevi Ministers conference which set out new asylum policies and heralded the end of the Trevi Group
Introduction
The meeting of the EC Interior Ministers on 30 November - 1 December 1992 in London was, as usual, conducted in secret with the press given selective briefings. The meetings of the 12 Interior Ministers (including the Home Secretary from the UK) take place twice a year at end of each of the six-monthly Presidency's of the EC. The Interior Ministers' meeting reports to the following full EC Council meetings of Prime Ministers -the latest being that in Edinburgh on 11-12 December chaired by John Major.
Prior to the Interior Ministers meetings a whole series of secret committees and working groups are held. During the British Presidency (July-December 1992) there were over 60 such meetings of officials, police, immigration and customs officers, and internal security services. Their meetings too are held in secret, drafts discussed and amended, disputes resolved and their reports in turn are reported to the Interior Ministers meeting where their minutes are routinely ratified - only points of contention are discussed by the Ministers. The European Parliament and the 12 national parliaments have no opportunity to discuss the documents prior to the meeting. The UK parliament does not discuss the reports considered partly because it is not told what has been decided and partly because the procedure followed allows for no debate. A "planted" written question elicits a few anodyne lines in Hansard from the Home Secretary reporting in the most general terms on the outcome of the meetings.
At the meeting in London last year the first day, 30 November, was spent on immigration and asylum policy, and on border controls. The next morning, on 1 December, Trevi matters were dealt with.
Immigration and asylum
The resolution on "manifestly unfounded" asylum applications, reported in the last issue of Statewatch, was split into two resolutions and a conclusion. The most contentious parts of the draft's preamble, which referred to "economic migrants" and to "intercontinental travel seldom being necessary for protection reasons", have now mostly been cut. This followed a further report in October expressing concern about the "presentational impact" of the first draft prepared by the UK Presidency. But the substance of the resolutions is the same: victims of human rights abuses, torture, disappearances and all the horror of modern civil war, are expected to seek sanctuary elsewhere in their own country if possible then to seek it in the first "safe" country they pass through (or could have gone to). If any of these conditions apply, or if the country they have fled from is deemed 'safe', their applications will not be considered substantively; they will be declared "manifestly unfounded" and subjected to an accelerated appeal procedure designed to get them out of Europe within a month.
Applications will also be deemed manifestly unfounded if the authorities believe they were "made to forestall expulsion", if the applicant has failed to comply with, for example, a fingerprinting request, or has destroyed or mutilated documents, or has been rejected elsewhere, or expresses a desire for better living conditions or a job, or there are other urgent reasons for getting rid of the applicant, such as "serious public security reasons".
Two issues were left unresolved. The German Minister felt it would be "helpful" to have an agreed list of "safe" countries, other considered this would be controversial. Some countries wanted a provision to be included that the removal of asylum seekers to a third country considered "safe" should be dependent on this country agreeing to accept them - this was turned down because it would take too long.
The two resolutions and conclusion on asylum, a discussion on a resolution on family re-unification (this was deferred for minor amendment to the