EU: "Checking the fences: Immigration and asylum in theassociated states"
01 May 1996
The development by the member states of the European Union (EU) of bilateral and multilateral agreements which made the states of central and eastern Europe responsible for policing immigration through their borders into EU territory was evident back in 1993 (see Statewatch, vol 3 no 6). In 1995, the European Commission funded a study by former UK government employee, now freelance consultant A J Langdon, into the scope for more formal cooperation between the EU and the "Associated States" in immigration and policing issues (see Statewatch vol 6 no 2).
Ten buffer states have Europe Agreements with the EU: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. These states are encouraged to "integrate" economically and politically in preparation for eventual accession to the EU, as is their "integration" in justice and home affairs issues (immigration and policing). They are offered financial support and training in the buffer zone role, and as a further incentive, the nationals of some countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) have been granted limited rights to set themselves up in business in EU countries.
The report indicates that an acceding state would be expected to show that it could "adequately regulate its external frontier against the pressures of unauthorised migration and illegal trafficking", align with EU visa policy, sign up to the Dublin Convention (on determining the state responsible for dealing with an asylum claim), and have refugee determination procedures not too disparate from those in EU countries. It concludes that the associated states are on the whole a long way from achieving these targets.
"Structured dialogue"
There were two ministerial-level meetings in 1995 between EU Justice and Home Affairs ministers and their central and eastern European counterparts, as well as meetings at working group level on organised crime (including illegal immigration networks), immigration and asylum policy. Despite these meetings, the secrecy surrounding decisions taken by the Council of Justice and Home Affairs Ministers leads to a sense of exclusion among the associated states.
Another complaint among them is that little equipment and very little money has been forthcoming to enable them to perform their buffer functions, although there has been a lot of training offered within the framework of the Budapest Group on uncontrolled migration (which includes the EU, the associated countries, the USA, Canada, Australia, the Russian Federation, and international organisations on immigration). Although the feared "invasion" of immigrants from the east did not happen, the states of central Europe play reluctant host to a "transit population" of would-be asylum-seekers from Asia and Africa, trapped by strengthened borders between these states and western Europe - although IOM and UNHCR have helped with "voluntary return facilitation" for refused asylum-seekers and people trapped in transit countries.
The states' main demand is more help from the EU to strengthen what are effectively the EU's eastern borders. They want computers, transport, communications, equipment to examine documents, digitalised fingerprint registers. They want to be locked into the information systems that exist in the EU. The impression given by the reporter is that central and eastern European border control is in some cases at a level where fences would be of more use than computers - although it is very uneven, with Hungary, for example, a real "success" story with 2 million travellers refused entry in the past year.
In the field of asylum, the associated states want access to EU assessments of asylum-seekers' countries of origin and transit. But the Baltic states have so far failed to ratify the Geneva Convention, while Hungary limits its operation to European refugees, and some countries which have all the international instruments<