Immigration, asylum and Maastricht
01 January 1992
Why is Douglas Hurd so fervent in his refusal to allow immigration and asylum to come within the province of the European Community? And why does Chancellor Kohl want the opposite? Statewatch analyses the history of European cooperation on immigration and asylum and looks at the factors pressing on member states.
Although the Single European Act of 1987 committed all EC member states to abolish internal borders by 1 January 1993, it left immigration policy to member states' own governments leaving harmonisation of policies vis-a-vis immigration and asylum to inter-governmental agreements. This is because it has always been seen as an aspect of policing - of control of people entering a country and inside it. While these issues can be made the subject of cooperation on the ground, governments do not always want to expose them to the scrutiny of their own national parliaments, let alone the European Parliament.
Thus, the TREVI group of Ministers, set up in 1976 to deal with "terrorism, radicalism, extremism and violence", comprised Home Affairs ministers from the Twelve, together with their senior police and security chiefs, but outside the remit of European institutions. By 1987 it had expanded its brief to take in "policing and security aspects of free movement", including immigration, visas, asylum and border controls. Its meetings and conclusions are unpublicised, and deal with practical aspects of police, customs and immigration service cooperation.
Another example of the inter-governmental approach is the Schengen Accord. Signed in 1985, it committed signatory states, who were at that time just five - France, Germany and the Benelux countries - to working out measures to compensate for the abolition of internal borders in the fields of policing and immigration. The Schengen Supplementary Agreement, signed in 1990 by the original five countries, and later by Italy, Spain and Portugal, sets out those measures in detail. They cover the criteria and procedures for the issue of visas, the strengthening of external border controls, measures for dealing with asylum-seekers who have come through another Schengen country, penalties for transport operators bringing in undocumented and falsely documented passengers, the setting up of computerised information exchange systems on refugees, 'undesirables' and criminals, together with a host of other measures on immigration, internal controls and policing.
The UK says it will not join Schengen Agreement because, unlike the TREVI group, it starts with the abolition of internal border controls, which the UK will not accept, arguing that this will allow access to Britain for terrorists, criminals, drug traffickers and illegal immigrants.
The Ad Hoc Group on Immigration is another inter-governmental forum, comprising the same Home Affairs ministers as the TREVI group. It was set up in October 1986 to "end abuses of the asylum process". It was this group which, in April 1987, agreed to sanctions on transport operators bringing in undocumented asylum- seekers, and to a procedure for limiting asylum requests to one country. Britain had already brought in fines for airlines in the previous month. In 1990 the Ad Hoc group produced the Dublin Convention, which limits the rights of asylum-seekers by deciding which country is responsible for processing his/her application, thus allowing only one application. The Convention also sets up a system of information exchange on "migratory movements", and on individual asylum-seekers.
European institutions did not enter this picture until 1988, when the Council of Ministers set up a Group of Coordinators to oversee the work of TREVI and the Ad Hoc Group. The Group of Coordinators set out the tasks of the inter-governmental bodies in securing the borders of Europe and ensuring internal controls in the Palma Document of 1989. There was still no impetus for immigration or asylum policy to be brought within the competence of the E