The harsh rhetoric emanating from EU leaders in the run-up to the Seville Summit failed to translate into similarly hard-line action over immigration, writes Iason Athanasiadis Click to view caption The fierce verbal battles that Europe's prime ministers and other high-ranking officials fought in the media, prior to last week's Seville Summit, were replaced by intensive discussions -- interrupted by the occasional World Cup match -- on the future of the European Union's (EU's) asylum policy. The agenda of the EU heads-of-state get-together in Seville -- a summit originally slated to discuss future EU enlargement -- was hijacked by the recent upsurge in right-wing electoral support across Europe. Parties, campaigning on an exclusionist, anti-foreigner message, made significant gains at polls in France, Holland and Denmark. Their victories powered the immigrant issue to the top of the agenda as elected, centrist leaders attempted to prove that they could lay down the law on immigrants. The issue became fiercely divisive, as member-states debated an appropriate reaction. Pronouncements originating from Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom, in the run-up to the summit, suggested that the three countries were playing at being more right-wing than the racists. When not watching their national teams crash out of the World Cup, the three nations tabled controversial proposals, relating to the possible imposition of punishments on countries that refuse to readmit citizens who have been expelled from the EU. The sanctions included the possible withholding of development aid or the annulling of trade agreements. France, Sweden and Luxembourg opposed the proposals and warned that cutting aid could deepen poverty in poor countries. They suggested that increased incentives would lead to better results. "You are not going to solve the problems by brandishing a sword, especially a wooden one," French President Jacques Chirac told a news conference. He also warned that punishing poor countries for inaction would be counter- productive and would harm the wealthy European bloc's image as a defender of liberties. Instead, the leaders resolved to offer positive incentives, to enlist the cooperation of developing countries, while leaving open the possibility that offending countries be penalised in ways that would not jeopardise their progress. Finding a solution to the issue of immigration has been given added urgency by looming deadlines for expanding the union to take in 10 East European countries and Mediterranean island nations by 2004. There are fears that, in the absence of a uniform immigration policy, the EU will be swamped by a tidal wave of illegal immigrants entering through the new members' porous eastern borders. Within the EU, border controls have mostly been scrapped. Spain underlined this fear when Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy announced that immigration would be the most important phenomenon facing the EU in the next 50 years. The leaders set deadlines in 2002 and 2003, for decisions to create a common asylum policy that would discourage abuse of the system and the practice of "asylum shopping", whereby immigrants drift through the Schengen group of countries as they decide where to settle. EU leaders hope that, by the time the next round of membership expansion is due, they will have articulated a comprehensive strategy that takes into account joint border patrols, improves cooperation among countries on visas and sends help to Italy, Spain and Greece -- three southern nations that take the brunt of illegal immigrants from Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans. Other considerations include sharing the cost of border controls and using naval ships and planes to track and intercept boats carrying illegal aliens. The summit called for common standards for training border guards by mid-2003 and decided to set up joint operations at external borders and create a network of immigration liaison officers by the end of the year. But there was no mention of an EU common border guard, which countries such as Britain and Sweden regard as a step too far towards a European federation. Tony Blair, whose country may not be a "front- line state" but who does have to contend with a powerful right-wing press and increasingly intractable domestic public opinion -- was verbally mauled by Clare Short, his international development secretary. She called the plan, "a very silly idea", adding that the prospect of taking away aid from refugees from the Taliban regime who returned to Afghanistan was "a piece of nonsense". She added, "It's morally repugnant to hurt the poor of the world in order to get your way with a different policy intent -- it wouldn't work." Blair protested, "This is not about chucking out legal migrants. It is about ensuring that the people traffickers who trade in human misery cannot exploit weaknesses." But Short also accused the British prime minister of using immigrants as an excuse to slash aid budgets to needy, Third World countries: "We should not hurt the poor of a country to try to force their government to do something we want for other purposes. That wouldn't be right," she said. Criticism was also voiced by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson. "There is a kind of public mood which, unfortunately, is not being addressed by political leaders with sufficient leadership," she said. "The mood does not reflect reality -- the number of those seeking to come to Europe for asylum or refugee status is actually on the decline. Politicians need to stress the benefits of the absorption of those refugees, and the fact that those who come for economic reasons are very beneficial." But despite a decline in entrants to the EU in recent years, a cursory glance at Europe's southern neighbours -- the most prolific producers of immigrants to the wealthy continent -- reveals that high birth-rates and weak economies suggest there will be no let-up in immigrants in the next two generations. Egypt, with a 70 million-strong population of which 37 per cent are 15 years old or younger, is a prime case in point. Their North African neighbours, whose colonial past ties them culturally and economically to European nations such as France, Belgium, Italy and Spain, cause EU officials extreme concern. About 35 per cent of an estimated 31 million Algerians are 14 years old or under and will be emerging onto the job-market in the next decade. In Tunisia, estimates put unemployment at around 30 per cent while Morocco has a jobless rate of 13 per cent. The European Commission, (EC), estimates that half a million illegal migrants enter the bloc each year, in addition to some 680,000 legal immigrants. Some 370 million people live in the EU. Human rights group Amnesty International welcomed the shift away from sanctions. "The threat of sanctions highlighted how distorted the EU's policies were becoming," Dick Oosting, director of Amnesty's EU office, said in a statement. Many EU countries face the problem of a rising number of pensioners that is unmatched by similarly high rates of population growth. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar admitted, "Fortress Europe and all that is an irrelevance, we need immigrants. You have to strike a balance between rights, responsibilities and reasonable expectations." The debate over immigrants seems to bypass the fact that the numbers swelling the EU's 370 million population are relatively small, at least compared to the US. Should the present rate of immigration continue over a decade, it would add about three per cent to the EU population, compared to the nearly five per cent that swelled the US in the 1990s.
