New Europe, new state
01 January 1991
New Europe, new state
artdoc November-1993
This article appeared in the New Statesman on 5 November 1993:
The Maastricht Treaty finally came into effect on 1 November and
with it the European state. The plethora of ad hoc groups created
since 1976 - the Trevi group, the Ad Hoc Group on Immigration,
the Coordinators of Free Movement and all their working parties -
are to disappear and be replaced by permanent committees and
agencies based in Brussels. But the intergovernmental basis of
these ad hoc arrangements which excludes the European Parliament
and ensures the secrecy of their proceedings is preserved.
The new structures have been worked out by state officials in
secret and then agreed by Interior Ministers of the 12 EC states.
Police officers, customs and immigration officials, members of
the Special Branches and internal security services and civil
servants from the Interior and Justice Ministries have developed
new structures and agencies to counter the perceived `threats'
to public order and internal security posed by terrorism,
immigration and drugs were seen as inextricably linked. The
external `enemy', the peoples of the Third World and Eastern
Europe, threatened political stability and economic harmony. A
euro-racism emerged which legitimised the exclusion of refugees
and asylum-seekers and the second-class status of black and Third
World migrants resident within the EC. This ideology, in turn,
fuelled the growth of racist and fascist groups within the EC.
The Trevi group, the first of these intergovernmental groups
involving the 12 EC states, was set up at a meeting of the EC
Council in Luxembourg in 1976 at the behest of the then Labour
government represented by Home Secretary James Callaghan. Its
remit was to tackle terrorism through a network of Special
Branches and internal security services, and with encouraging
police cooperation in a number of fields. With the creation of
the Ad Hoc Group on Immigration (and its many working parties)
in 1986 the ground began swiftly to shift. The Rhodes EC Council
in 1988 set up the Coordinators Group (misleadingly referred to
as the Coordinators of Free Movement). This group comprises 12
senior officials from Interior Ministries, a chairman, and the
Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the
internal market. Their report, the Palma Document, adopted in
Madrid in 1989, laid the blue-print for the European state and
was reflected in the Maastricht Treaty agreed in December 1991.
The Treaty creates two new `pillars': the `second pillar'
covering defence and foreign policy (Article J) and the `third
pillar' on justice and internal affairs (Article K) (the `first
pillar' being economic and social affairs).
The Palma Document also set out the need for a system of
surveillance at external borders, `combatting clandestine
immigration networks' and for the compilation of a list of those
`wanted' and `inadmissible'. In June 1990 the Trevi Ministers
said that the priority was to tackle `terrorism, drug trafficking
or any forms of crime including organised illegal immigration'
because aliens are likely to `compromise public order'.
The Trevi group and the Schengen countries (the nine EC states
excluding the UK, Ireland and Denmark) drew up lists of countries
requiring visas to enter - all Third World and Eastern European
countries. The rationale was that those arriving at the EC's
borders are `economic migrants'. The concept of entry based on
need, which strips racism from the argument, has never been on
the agenda. Instead a House of Lords Select Committee could speak
of the need to construct a `cordon sanitaire' around the external
borders of the EC.
The first formal measure was the Dublin Convention (1990) which
introduced the one-stop rule which allows asylum seekers only to
apply for residence in one EC country - the decision of this
country being binding on all. This policy now