France to set out new European priorities for immigration

BRUSSELS: France unveils on Monday sweeping guidelines to control immigration in Europe, as the EU comes under international fire over moves to force illegal immigrants out.

At informal talks in the Riviera resort city of Cannes, Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux will present a "European Pact on Immigration and Asylum", a major plank of France's EU presidency, which began on July 1.

It sets out principles for the 27-nation bloc to manage migration, fight illegal immigration and help development in poor countries that people are leaving or travelling through to get to Europe.

The package comes as Spain and Malta struggle to deal with boatloads of Africans making perilous journeys across the Mediterranean, while Italy has startled its neighbours with plans to fingerprint Roma gypsies.

In contrast, many European countries are in need of skilled immigrant and seasonal workers as their populations decline and grow steadily older. EU officials say the pact will set the immigration agenda for years to come.

It will be built, in part, on the newly agreed "returns directive", which obliges states to give residency to illegal immigrants or send them home, and empowers them to detain people for up to 18 months if needed during processing.

Those laws, set to enter force in 2010, have been branded "outrageous" and xenophobic by leaders in South America, many of whose nationals live in Europe and send billions of dollars back home to their families.

The criticism, aired at a meeting of the Mercosur trade bloc last week and echoed by rights and green groups, has surprised the EU and officials warn that the world will be closely watching the French initiative.

"We shouldn't under-estimate the kind of global impact that it will have, especially given the unexpected global impact of the agreement on the returns directive," one official in Brussels said, on condition of anonymity.

"We can probably expect that people will be looking at the pact as a statement of identity of EU immigration and asylum policy," he said. In that light, he went on, the EU must "make sure that what we put forward is balanced and gives a proper picture of where we are on immigration."

France, its agenda driven by President Nicolas Sarkozy, a former interior minister notorious for his tough stance on immigration, wants agreement on the pact by October so that it can be endorsed by EU leaders.

And despite some notable resistance from Spain, many EU nations accept the broad outlines of the document which officials say is mainly old ideas in new packaging.

In endorsing the new pact, in a city that embodies some dreams that foreigners from across the water might aspire to, the ministers will be committing Europe to a new vision of immigration.

According to draft documents, they will agree to organise legal immigration based on a state's needs and ability to welcome people, and combat illegal immigration, ensuring that foreigners in Europe illegally are removed.

In exchange for the free movement that Europeans enjoy in the Schengen passport-free zone, the EU's borders to the outside world will be beefed up even further.

Refugees will be increasingly obliged to apply for asylum status from outside, some 220,000 people did this in Europe last year, although the bloc will strive to better target aid to those countries they are fleeing.

The ministers will also pledge to try to avoid handing out residency permits en-masse. Italy and Spain, notably, have given papers to some 700,000 people in recent years but France refuses to do so now, although it has done in the past.

"Foreigners are human beings and when they come they have social rights. If we let everybody in ... the French and European social (welfare systems) are going to explode," Sarkozy said last week as France took up the EU helm. "We can't give papers to everyone," he said.