SEVILLE, June 21: European Union leaders rejected on Friday hardline calls to punish poor countries that fail to cooperate in the fight against illegal immigration into the wealthy 15-nation bloc.
But, alarmed by public support for populist anti-immigration parties, the leaders endorsed proposals for tighter border controls and agreed to press third countries hard to cooperate.
Diplomats said German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, facing an uphill struggle for re-election in September, was most virulent in seeking financial penalties for non-compliance.
Britain and Spain also wanted the bloc to withhold aid from outside countries that fail to fight people smugglers and take back their rejected nationals, but backed down after fierce opposition from France, Sweden and some other states.
“There will be nothing on sanctions,” Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson told reporters of a final text to be adopted by the leaders on Saturday.
Punitive measures were “useless” and using foreign aid as a lever on developing nations, which migrants were fleeing in search of a better life in Europe, would hurt the bloc’s credibility, he said.
Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique, whose country chaired the Seville summit, said the EU leaders were likely to agree that non-member countries’ inaction should have consequences.
“If a country systematically infringes agreements...that is, breaks rules of play, then the EU reserves the right to see whether there should be consequences of such behaviour,” he said.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw acknowledged that most leaders wanted the EU to focus on positive incentives to reward cooperation by other countries rather than punishment.
“What most people have in mind is...positive conditionality,” he said. “Countries will get more assistance if they comply with these cooperative agreements.”
FAR-RIGHT SUPPORT: Human-rights groups and some European lawmakers accused the EU leaders of pandering to the far right, which made big recent election gains in France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Italy.
“The most positive outcome for this summit would be if they reached no agreement at all,” Rafael Lara, head of the Human Rights Association of Andalucia, told a nearby protest forum.
“These policies are inspired by the separation of human beings, and that is called racism.”
But Straw dismissed the criticism.
Diplomats said EU leaders were likely to instruct their interior ministers to speed up decisions about the bloc’s slow-moving common asylum and immigration policy, where progress has been blocked by national interests.
Some doubted the effectiveness of such a call, saying Germany and Austria showed no new willingness to speed up the creation of a common approach, which according to the EU’s governing treaties is supposed to be in place by 2004.
Most EU governments introduced so-called “zero-immigration” policies in the mid-1970s economic crisis, leaving few legal ways to enter apart from asylum systems, family reunion or marriage.—Reuters