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Progress towards an area of liberty, security and justice
February 11, 2004 12:00 AM
By Sarah Ludford MEP in European Parliament
By Sarah Ludford MEP in European Parliament
Although this is an annual stocktaking we are close to the five-year assessment of the achievements of the Tampere programme and thought now needs to be given to Tampere II. We have to say that the Commission has done its job, but the Council's record is not outstanding. Both output and method need improvement.
Looking first at asylum and immigration, we still do not have all the pieces of the jigsaw in place for common policies. Europeans need to have a sense that we are truly acting together to have well-regulated but fair systems in which responsibility is shared. But where is the solidarity in the disgraceful way that, one after another, 13 Member States have signalled they will impose restrictions on free movement from new Eastern Member States?
States have been more zealous about toughening borders and deporting illegal immigrants and on making sure immigrants are legal and integrated. The Council passed a grudging directive on long-term immigrants and one on family reunification. However, there has been no rush to implement the 2002 anti-trafficking framework decision to catch the criminal gangs, and recently in the UK 19 Chinese immigrants tragically died. It appears they were trafficked, but there is no law in place.
We have major challenges in Europe in addressing prejudice and discrimination and promoting equality. The challenge to integrate the Roma looms large on our agenda.
I am delighted President Prodi is holding a seminar on anti-Semitism next week, but why has the Council failed to agree the framework decision on making racial harassment and racial attacks a criminal offence?
We need to enhance our understanding of what integration means as opposed to assimilation. Yesterday the French National Assembly voted overwhelmingly to ban the hijab and other overt religious symbols. We in Britain, where policewomen can wear the hijab, look on this with cross-Channel bewilderment.
In the area of anti-terrorism and law enforcement, there has been much useful activity, but a lack of balance in concern for civil liberties, democratic accountability and transparency. I am delighted the European Police College will be located in England, but less impressed that the UK Government, with 12 citizens and residents in Guantanamo Bay - half the total of Europeans there - has failed to take the lead in getting a common position and joint action by the European Union to persuade the US to apply international law and uphold prisoners' rights there. The Mutual Legal Assistance Agreement that was signed with the US, over our objections, stressed the rule of law, but does not seem to have borne any fruit.
Now we are taking too many steps invading personal privacy - agreeing to let the US access sensitive air passenger data and to put biometric data on visas and passports - while making no efforts to get an instrument for data protection in the third pillar. This shows an extraordinary cavalier attitude to individual rights.
In the future we will need to make more of an effort to raise the quality of our observance of justice systems through a process of mutual surveillance and peer review. That is going to involve some interesting questions about where the balance lies between European common action and intervention in national systems. But we have to reinforce our efforts, because the quality of what we are doing on freedom, security and justice is not yet adequate.
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