Outsourced immigration policy, neglected protection system – time to revive the Tampere spirit

Abdelkrim Belguendouz's article is a telling description of the European Union's attempts to outsource its immigration and asylum policies and to prevent immigrants and asylum seekers from entering EU territory.

Examples of the means aiming to keep the unwanted on the outside include intensifying border control, new registers, sanctions on transporters, cooperation with the authorities of transit countries and the so-called readmission agreements. The sealing of EU borders has been justified as improving security and curbing illegal immigration. Asylum seekers are the scapegoats that have paid the highest price for the post-September 11 securitization frenzy.

Given the scarcity of legal ways of entering the EU, asylum seekers are forced to resort to human smuggling and other precarious activities. People reaching for Europe risk drowning in the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, or being shot dead in North Africa. As EU member states block more and more entry routes, the journey into Europe gets ever more dangerous. After Spain and Morocco had strengthened border control around Ceuta and Melilla, for example, desperate asylum seekers endeavoured to reach the Canary Islands by sea from Mauritania. A couple of months later their passage became even longer, with vessels departing as far as Senegal.

Belguendouz expresses forceful criticism of the EU's planned regional protection programmes which he sees as being a part of the Union's wider policy of externalization. The official purpose of these programmes is to enhance the capacity of transit countries – in Africa or western parts of the former Soviet Union, for instance – to protect refugees.

Assisting countries that accommodate large numbers of refugees is indeed something that is greatly needed. Through the regional protection programmes the EU could, if it so desired, assume responsibility over the global refugee situation and help create sustainable solutions.

However, Belguendouz is not convinced by the EU's plans. There are good grounds for his scepticism.

The EU seems to think that protecting refugees as close to their home country as possible is some kind of a magic cure that will do away with all problems. In so doing, it forgets that large numbers of refugees may have a negative impact on the accommodating country's political stability.

It is also important to ask whether the EU intends to label the countries for which regional protection programmes are planned as safe transit countries where asylum seekers could be shipped without processing their applications. This logic has been taken further in the negotiations over the list of the so-called safe countries of origin: Tanzania, for example, has been proposed to be included in the list, for a regional protection programme is being planned for it. But Tanzania's policies vis-à-vis foreign refugees convey nothing of how safe it is for its own citizens – by definition, a refugee is most often one who flees the persecution of the authorities of his or her own country.

What perhaps undermines the EU's credibility the most is the inadequate level of its own asylum policy. Within the so-called Dublin system, asylum seekers who have managed to enter Union territory are being sent back and forth between member states without proper hearings or any guarantees of asylum. The directives that should define the minimum standards for the treatment of asylum seekers are so feeble that there exists no genuine community-wide policy to speak of. Member states' systems being extremely diverse, getting an asylum in the EU is essentially a game of chance.

Many member states unnecessarily hold asylum seekers in custody, often in places unsuitable for human dwelling. Member states also turn asylum seekers back to countries where they face torture and imprisonment.

While the number of asylum seekers within the EU has decreased by half from 2001, attitudes towards them have become harsher. Finland is no exception: they are habitually accused of abusing the system, an allegation which no doubt stirs up racism and xenophobia. One example of Finland's tightening attitude is the policy of issuing Somalis, Iraqis and Afghanis, for instance, only temporary residence permits. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recommends that all those fleeing Somalia be rendered international protection. Do the EU's calls for better protection for refugees not ring hollow when its own member states violate their international obligations? What is the credibility of a Commission that keeps silent about severe shortcomings within the Union?

The Tampere European Council, held during Finland's previous presidency in 1999, decided that a global and coherent immigration policy be created for the EU. The policy was to honour the right for asylum and to fully encompass and apply the Geneva Refugee Convention. Now, seven years on, it seems that this "spirit of Tampere" has been completely forgotten. As Belguendouz points out, much of what was decided then is yet to be put into practice.

The presidency gives Finland an exceptional chance to change the course of European immigration and asylum policy. The most vital thing to do is to create a comprehensive and coherent system by which all those in need of protection receive protection, regardless of which member state they happen to arrive in. Making sure that everyone who seeks asylum has the chance to enter the EU to apply for it is equally important. What better occasions to resurrect the Tampere spirit than the informal meeting of ministers of justice and home affairs in September and the EUROMED ministerial meeting in November, both held in Tampere.

Translated by Henri Purje