Europol does not give the expected results

This time, it is not the size of the mirrors of trucks or the expiration date of beauty products. The need for a common European policy for managing migratory flows and ensure the safety of citizens is obvious. It is sufficient to hear the Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, to take, a year after, against the decision of the Government of Spain to regularize, coup, clandestine 700,000 to understand that, in this field, the decisions taken by a Member State of a Union whose borders have been abolished have repercussions on all its partners. And the fight against Al-Qaida networks, criminality or the mafia dies can be effective only if it is based on close cooperation and common to the twenty-five rules of the game. Polls show that citizens, often sceptical soured-screw of a poorly understood Europe, demand more action in the field of security and immigration. A to hear Governments follow them. Not a statement in which, from Warsaw to London, without forget Paris, European leaders did call for the creation of an "area of freedom, security" and justice in the European Union. But since the Treaty of Amsterdam and the Tampere European Council in 1999, who programmed first in implementing a common policy on asylum, visas, immigration and judicial cooperation in civil matters, there is the feeling that Europe short after without ever the catch a reality dominated by the emergency and national sovereignty. The fight against criminality and terrorism tramples underfoot and General, progress is insufficient. He took the attacks of September 11 for the twenty-five adopt, within two years, the European arrest warrant. But today, it is the "mandate for obtaining evidence" between national courts which is at a standstill. Europol does not give the expected results. As the sorry a few days ago the European Commissioner responsible for these issues, Franco Frattini, the draft directive which aims to allow investigation and cross-border procedures is blocked. Another text, on the minimum guarantees in criminal proceedings and which provides, inter alia, the presence of an interpreter to the accused, is suspended to the good will of Member States who refuse that the Union thus put the foot in the door of the harmonization of procedures.

In the field of asylum and immigration, the faults of the European system spread to the big day: a common asylum system offering such differences in treatment between the Member countries that the candidates will continue to try their luck in several States hoping to succeed in one or the other. Waves growing of African immigrants in boats of fortune on the Mediterranean coasts of the Union, and managed in emergency by Member States overwhelmed and left to themselves. In these cases, solidarity is no longer part of the European vocabulary. The Frontex Agency, imagined as a border police, had to back its ambitions in the susceptibility of the new Member States. This summer, it evidence of his impotence in the face the influx of illegal immigrants in the Canary Islands. Illegal, refusing to give their nationality, are literally released in a Member State, without agreements of readmission with countries of origin. Integration of these illegal is then very difficult, if not by regularisations which are "calls for air" for new candidates.

Why so many difficulties to find common answers The reasons are so technical that policies. All projects regarding police cooperation and criminal justice remain subject to unanimity in the twenty-five is the "third pillar" of the Maastricht Treaty (1). Worse, they are not subject to the control of the Court of justice. Result: States can block decisions and do not apply when they are passed. Thus the directive on the harmonization of penalties for trafficking human is not applied. It is better in these conditions why some French Minister of the Interior, with a taste for action, regularly left the Council of Ministers of the Interior to work five or six Governments. It is also why, in a more European reflex, the European Commission and some States including the France argue that still matters from the third pillar police and criminal cooperation are integrated in the first, i.e. in common policies. But this requires unanimity, and several countries, including the Germany, refused to give the green light, and observers say that it will happen not before 2009. Criminals and terrorists are still beautiful days ahead.

The other pan of the issues of security and freedom is now an integral part of the first pillar and is, in principle, subject to qualified majority. But it would be too simple. If this is the case for illegal immigration and the controls at the borders (since May 1, 2004) and (since the beginning of the year) asylum, legal immigration continues to be subject to the rule of unanimity and the judicial cooperation when it relates to the right of the family...

Member States therefore have no difficulty to hide behind the legal maze to refuse such progress. They will incorporate, in vain control their police and their justice to the last bastions of sovereignty without considering that it is through the mutual trust that is organizing the better Europe of security. Commissioner Frattini would match the criteria of home for legal immigrants and establish a comprehensive legal framework for their admission, their working conditions and their integration, even if each country retains the upper hand on the number of workers it can host each year. But the idea faces, again, some Member States, in particular the Germany deafness. Impossible, in these circumstances, to build a coherent immigration policy, open, on the one hand, workers-extra European OECD estimates that 20 million the needs of the European Union to here in 2030 and more strict, on the other, to illegal immigrants, that is would also seek to anchor in their countries with a genuine co-development policy. Europe is indeed down.