Republican News · Thursday 27 June 2002

Fortifying Fortress Europe

BY SOLEDAD GALIANA

Legislation aimed at tightening Fortress Europe immigration policies was the central focus of the European Union summit in Seville last weekend. At the same time and in the same city, a group of so-called "illegal immigrants" were staging a hunger strike.

The 460 immigrants - most of them North-African - have been staging a sit-in at a university outside Seville since 10 June and held a two-day hunger strike during the summit to press their demands for work and residency papers.

"We want them to look our way a little bit," said Toufik Kabyllie, a 30-year-old Algerian. "We just want the right to live and work like human beings," said another Algerian, Dichou Rabah, 26.

The Africans are staying in two small, decrepit gymnasiums on the campus of Pablo de Olavide University, sleeping on foam rubber mattresses or on the floor and sitting in gloomy silence in the stifling heat of the sun-baked Andalucía region.

Many of the protesters were working as fruit pickers for around €30 a day - sometimes less - in neighbouring Huelva province. This year, they were largely shut out as growers, fearing a crackdown on the employment of illegal aliens in Spain, turned instead to workers from Eastern Europe, who have work permits and who the Spanish farmers can pay even less.

Most of the immigrants had crossed the Mediterranean in flimsy boats, leaving families behind and risking their lives, hoping for a better future and that the money would improve the lives of their relatives back home. However, what they encounter when arriving in Spain - or any other European country - is slave wages, hard work and institutionalised discrimination.

There is little or no hope that the Spanish government or its European Union counterparts will allow them the right to live and work like human beings.

Setting the agenda for the European Union summit, right-wing Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar urged a stricter EU line on illegal immigration, as he wants to toughen Spain's own laws on undocumented foreigners.

However, the Spanish PM must have been disappointed at the outcome of the summit, as his government, with the support of Britain, Italy and Germany, wanted to link development aid to cooperation on immigration and to threaten to suspend trade agreements with countries that refused to help. Sweden and France, however, argued that sanctions would be counter-productive because increased poverty would simply increase the number of economic migrants. They suggested that, instead of punishing poor countries, the EU should help them to improve their economies - and their border controls.

Some observers were surprised to see France's new conservative government arguing for a softer line while two centre-left governments, in Germany and Britain, wanted tougher action. But the French Interior Minister, Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, himself the son of Hungarian refugees, made clear two weeks ago that France would not allow the EU to react in panic to the rise of anti-immigration parties.

However, the 15 EU leaders did agree on a different set of rules to be imposed on developing countries, offering "positive incentives" to those countries that attempt to crack down on people smugglers and who are prepared to readmit their citizens.

In future, all EU agreements with non-EU states are to "include a clause on joint management of migration flows and on compulsory readmission in the event of illegal immigration". This will include those who are "unlawfully present" in the EU, eg: own nationals of the third country and people who may have passed through the third country in transit. "In the event" that there is an "unjustified lack of co-operation", the EU will apply direct pressure through agreements on trade, aid and assistance, coupled with political and diplomatic sanctions

The EU members also agreed to establish joint operations on the EU's external borders by the end of the year - although this will not amount to the full-scale border guard that some countries wanted. It has also set deadlines in 2002 and 2003 for a final decision on establishing a single set of standards to deal with asylum applications across the union.

"We should all be ashamed of what has been agreed in our names by the EU Prime Ministers and Ministers in Seville," said Tony Bunyan, editor of the European Union watchdog Statewatch. "The swathe of measures being put in place means the EU is heading for a situation where people fleeing poverty and persecution are to be expelled, repatriated, deported back to where they have come from, regardless of the circumstances.

"The rationale of EU governments is that they must respond to the demands of the far-right - the racists and the fascists - by what they call "triangulation", that is to say by adopting far-right policies to try and exclude them from national parliaments. Such a policy of appeasement has an appalling historical precedent."

Colm Ó Cuanacháin, Co-ordinator of Comhlámh with Irish NGO Comhlámh, has strongly criticised the stance of the Dublin government at the summit. He says that the measures proposed will clearly impact on Ireland's aid programme, which until now has been admirable for its focus on poverty reduction in developing countries.

Justice Minister Michael McDowell backed proposals linking aid to developing countries with the return of migrants. This policy shift inverts Irish policy, with aid being made conditional and being used to secure our own interests. Ó Cuanacháin adds that there was no consultation with NGOs in this shift of policy.

"Minister McDowell is undermining the Ireland Aid Review, the newest plank of Irish foreign policy. The Department of Foreign Affairs and development NGOs have worked to enhance the effectiveness of aid, and now the Minister for Justice has rubbished their outcome," said Conall Ó Caoimh, Comhlámh Project Officer.

"Comhlámh welcomes the government commitment to the UN target of a 0.7% aid budget. But this cannot be at any price. Such a budget can never be tied to what are cynically termed 'Irish interests'. In whose interests is this policy being proposed? Not those of us who celebrate an increasingly inclusive, multicultural society."