POLITICS-EU/ACP: Immigration Clause Under Fire

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Brian Kenety

BRUSSELS, Feb 9 2000 (IPS) - European Union (EU) officials found themselves in the uncomfortable situation of having to defend their insistance on a repatriation clause in a trade and aid pact agreed with the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries last week.

Particularly since EU member countries recently imposed groundbreaking politcal sanctions on one of their own, Austria, for forming a coalition government that includes a far-right anti- immigration party.

EU governments late last year agreed to seek a standard clause on readmission in all agreements negotiated with other countries.

In the first major test of that decision, the ACP countries, after much wrangling, agreed to the inclusion of such a clause in the trade and aid accord that will replace the Lome IV Convention, which expires on Feb 29.

The fate of illegal immigrants must now be negotiated bilaterally between the EU (or one of its 15 member states) and ACP states separately.

The agreement was signed just as the international community was protesting the probable inclusion of Joerg Haider’s Freedom Party in a new Austrian government.

Haider has advocated a freeze on immigration and opposed the enlargement of the EU on the grounds that it could open Austria to a deluge of cheap foreign labourers.

Austria’s EU partners have said they will shun bilateral contacts with Austrian ministers and deny its ambassadors in the other 14 EU capitals access to ministers except at the technical level.

The member states also said they would withhold support for Austrian candidates applying for positions in international organisations.

It was in this context that Poul Nielson, European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Affairs, on Feb 7 rejected charges by journalists that the EU was allowing far-right parties to set the agenda on immigration.

He said the inclusion of the clause allowing for the repatriation of illegal immigrants in the new trade and aid pact would provide greater “stability”.

“In no way giving in to indecency in Europe … It is establishing a predictable regime in accordance with established international conventions and legal practices,” said Nielson.

The EU was intent on the new agreement containing provisions that would commit both sides to the principle of the readmission of illegal immigrants in three categories. These include; those coming from their own country; those from third countries; and stateless citizens, that is, those without papers.

Immigration has become a contentious issue for Austria, which shares borders with two “first wave” EU accession candidates, the Czech Republic and Hungary, as well as Slovenia and Slovakia.

Although European officials and international media have tended to couch their concern over Haider’s ascendancy in terms of its possible ramifications for immigrants from central and eastern Europe, and on the proposed expansion of the EU to the east, Africans make up a significant minority in many European countries, along with Arabs.

Race riots in Spain this week against North African labourers and immigrants underscored the hostility that many face on the continent.

Muthoni Muriu of the ACP Civil Society Forum wrote an open letter to the President of the ACP Council of Ministers on Jan 31, just prior to the finalisation of the successor to the Lome Convention.

He wrote that the EU’s desire to prevent illegal or clandestine immigration and its belief that certain African states, especially Ghana and Nigeria, are “immigration risks” states have ensured that today almost all African nationals require a visa and undergo stringent controls before they can enter an EU member state.

“(One) must note that the efforts to restrict further immigration affect both Africans with European citizenship as well as Africans legally residing in the EU, because they lead to controls based on skin colour” and nowhere in the pact does the right of appeal or right to a hearing for the migrant concerned appear,” wrote Muriu.

It is not the first time Austria has come under fire within the context of immigration policy. In July 1998, when Austria, for the first time, assumed the rotating EU presidency, it prepared a strategy paper on migration and immigration policy, the general approach of which immigration rights groups said “focused on how to deny procedural and legal safeguards to refugees and how to work towards ‘zero toleration’ of irregular migration.”

“In the area of asylum, (the Austrian Presidency’s Strategy Paper) reveals just how vital it is to guard even the most well- established, tried and tested standards,” wrote the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) and the Migration Policy Group (MPG), in a joint paper released late last year.

“In the area of migration policy, (the paper) is dangerously eurocentric, based on a ‘carrot and stick’ approach (making economic aid conditional on the signing of readmission agreements, for example) and conveys little sense of global responsibility.

The Austrian Strategy Paper did not greatly influence the content of the EU “action plan” on how to implement provisions of the Amsterdam Treaty, which entered into force in May 1999 and activated a broad new set of institutional arrangements for dealing with the agenda the EU set for itself, including regarding migrants, refugees and ethnic minorities in Europe.

Under Article Seven of the Amsterdam Treaty, EU members can suspend any partner found to be “in serious and persistent breach” of fundamental principles, such as democracy and the respect for human rights.

But the treaty contains no provisions to prevent such breaches in advance, and both Austria’s Haider and his new coalition partner Wolfgang Schussel (of the conservative People’s Party) have said that their coalition should be judged on its programme rather than on election campaign speeches.

However, echoes of the Austrian proposal to link aid to readmission agreements can be found in the successor agreement to the Lome Convention, signed by the EU and the 71 members of the ACP group last week. The gap between the text of a law and its implementation, especially at the low levels of government, are a cause of concern for the ACP Civil Society Forum.

“The issue of human rights is at the heart of many problems faced by migrants and ethnic minorities the world over, and the status and legality of the ACP nationals in the EU in not an exception,” wrote Muriu.

“(Despite) formal rules and norms governed by the constitutions of the EU member states and international law, there are many issues which affect ACP migrants in the EU.

These include: “citizenship, freedom of movement, racism and xenophobia, discrimination, strict and humiliating border controls, detention at borders, strict entry conditions, and different (discriminatory) interpretations of legal procedures by officials, among others.”

In seeking to isolate Austria for including Haider’s party in the coalition, the EU has had to deal with the awkward fact that he received a large share of the vote in a free and fair democratic election, the move risks bolstering his support at home.

“(But) how can we possibly impose principles on the candidate countries, some of whose democracies are still fragile, when those principles are not fully respected within the European Union itself?” asked Nicole Fontaine, President of the European Parliament at a session last week.

“(We) should not be lulled into forgetting the insulting, xenophobic and racist declarations and statements made by Joerg Haider,” she added, referring to Haider’s past praise for the “orderly” labour practices of the Nazis, and other controversial comments for which he has since apologised.

Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel told the Brussels-based Le Soir newspaper that he considered Haider a “dangerous man” and predicted that with the Freedom Party in a coalition government, the extreme right would cease to be something extraordinary in European politics and the EU’s message of “democracy, openness and tolerance” would ring hollow in its relations with other countries.

Respect for human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law, which underpins relations between the ACP states and the EU, constitute an “essential element” of current Lome IV Convention. Failure to meet an essential element can lead to the suspension of aid, such as the ACP state Togo is now experiencing due to the EU belief that the government came to power in unfair elections, or other sanctions.