EU ministers put finishing touches to immigration pact

Brussels - The European Union's interior ministers gathered in Brussels on Thursday to put the finishing touches on an immigration and asylum pact setting up common principles on the way member states manage the influx of non-EU nationals. The pact, which is due to be formally adopted by EU leaders at their October 15-16 summit, seeks to improve the management of legal immigration, tighten controls on illegal immigrants and construct a common asylum policy. But critics argue that its final, watered-down version is ineffective and gives too great a voice to national governments. For instance, the pact calls on EU countries to attract more highly skilled workers from outside the bloc. But it leaves governments with the power to decide who and how many of them should be admitted in their own countries. In this context, plans by the European Commission for an EU-wide Blue Card - granting better working and living conditions to non-EU professionals - have been effectively sunk by governments' insistence that they should establish their own rules on who can qualify. 'The expectations on the Blue Card were exaggerated,' said German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, one of the initiative's greatest critics. The pact also calls on member states to tighten controls on illegal immigrants and improve the effectiveness of controls on the bloc's external borders, for instance by sharing out the fingerprints of incoming foreigners in a common database. Another proposal involves national authorities enacting expulsion orders made by another member state. However, the EU's border control agency, Frontex, remains grossly underfunded, while there is little evidence that the mutual recognition of expulsion decisions is being implemented, according to a recent study by the Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels- based think tank. Meanwhile, plans for a common asylum policy are progressing slowly and are now not expected to come into force before 2012. Highlighting the difficulties existing in this area, some member states have resisted calls by Germany and Sweden to share out some 10,000 highly vulnerable Iraqi refugees among member states. On Thursday, ministers limited themselves to giving the green- light to a fact-finding mission to Syria and Jordan, where many displaced Iraqis have fled after the toppling of former dictator Saddam Hussein. The mission, which is to take place at the beginning of November, aims to identify those most in need of being granted asylum in Europe.