MNS Summary June 2008:
Subscribe to the MNS
More about the MNS
With regard to EU-related developments the June issue continues with the subject of the EU's Dublin Regulation and the complaint lodged by the European Commission with the European Court of Justice (ECJ) against Greece for not complying with one of its cornerstone provisions. In the meantime, criticisms against reception conditions in Greece continue with warnings of dire consequences of the spread of diseases made by the medical charity Médecins sans Frontières and a hunger strike by asylum-seeking children. Other ECJ news include this EU judicial body's ruling that the Council had exceeded its powers when establishing, through the consultation instead of co-decision procedure, the European and non-European list of safe countries of origin of asylum-seekers.
Regarding the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, there are two major news items: one is the extensive coverage given to the much awaited Grand Chamber ruling concerning a rejected Ugandan, HIV-infected asylum-seeker who argued, in vain, that returning her from the UK to her native country would amount to a violation of Article 3 and 8 of the Convention since care and medication to treat her illness were available in Uganda only to those could afford treatment; the other, which is a pending case, concerns applications lodged by 11 mostly rejected asylum-seekers in the UK who were accused of being "international terrorists" by the UK authorities, but never given the opportunity to defend themselves in a court of law and were subsequently held indefinitely in a high security prison in the UK.
In the first section on migration policies and law, the national news items include: criticisms of the requirement imposed on non-EU residents in Belgium to inform the authorities of any absence exceeding three months or else risk being denied entry upon return; Irish Supreme Court ruling which sets limits to the power of the Minister of Justice to deport non EU-parents of Irish-born children; accusation by Human Rights Watch that measures introduced in the Netherlands to promote integration are discriminatory towards certain third-country nationals, in particular Turks and Moroccans; excessive fees which third-country nationals have to pay for residence permits in Portugal; grave exploitation of Bosnian construction workers in Oslo; announcement in Spain that new immigration measures will be introduced soon; more details of Swedish Government's plan to open up labour market to third-country nationals; UK Government's announcement of more restrictions to employment of non-EEA nationals while farmers warn of dire consequences of rotting produce since manpower is increasingly difficult to obtain in agriculture.
The three main items under irregular migration are: the compromise reached by EU ambassadors on the text of a draft directive on expelling irregular migrants; the delays and the launch of this year's FRONTEX mission in the eastern Mediterranean and France's appeal to its EU partners not to organise any more massive amnesties.
National news items include the on-going debate in Belgium on an amnesty for irregular migrants and the criteria to be satisfied; the rather meagre results of a limited regularisation procedure in France for irregular migrants in regular jobs, hired by submitting false identity documents; proposed legislation in Germany for penalising people who obtain sexual services from women who appear to have been forced into prostitution; new methods used by traffickers to smuggle migrants to Greece; Libyan signs of reducing co-operation with Italy in combating irregular migration after the ministerial appointment of a politician who has often ridiculed Islam and whose wearing of a t-shirt with a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed in 2006 led to violent riots in Libya that resulted in the deaths of at least 11 demonstrators; Rome's adoption of a controversial package of measures to combat irregular migration which have been criticised by two Spanish Ministers; allegation that Moroccan coast guard officials had deliberately sunk an inflatable craft carrying irregular migrants, resulting in the drowning of at least 36 of them; Spain's announcement that the statutory maximum period of detention pending expulsion will be increased from 40 to 60 days; the Netherland's decision to penalise people who pay for the services of an unlicensed prostitute; sharp rise in the UK in the number of employers caught with irregular migrants at their service.
As for issues related to asylum/refugees, national news items include an agreement on border monitoring involving the Belarus Government, the UNHCR and NGOs to ensure that asylum-seekers have access to the refugee-status-determination procedure; suicide of a rejected asylum-seeker in Belgium after an aborted attempt to expel him by force; force repatriation from Denmark of two Iraqi refugees convicted of serious crimes and more to follow; less than a dozen volunteers to take up "generous" repatriation offer by Danish Government to rejected Iraqi asylum-seekers; strong protest made by Nigerian Government to the British authorities because of the removal of all Nigerian passengers on board a British Airways plane for protesting against the way one of their compatriots, a rejected asylum-seeker, was being forced to return to his home country; Stockholm's decision to stop returning unaccompanied children who are "Dublin cases" to Greece; adoption by a very large majority in the Swedish Parliament of a Bill to deny health care to rejected asylum-seekers and other irregular migrants; UK Government's plans to have two more detention centres built with a total capacity of up to 1,500 places; u-turn by British Home Secretary in the case of an Iranian homosexual who is eventually granted a subsidiary protection status.
In the section on racism and discrimination, the three main articles are the criticisms made against the Dutch Government for the extraordinary and apparently quite disproportionate means to arrest and detain a controversial cartoonist for his caricatures of Islam/Muslims, suspected of inciting discrimination and hatred; the increasing and murderous violence against foreigners in Russia; and the decision of the Swedish Ombudsman to support the case of a Muslim man who was sanctioned with the loss of his unemployment benefits for refusing to shake hands with a woman at a job interview.
Miscellaneous items include, as usual, more developments relating to banning the Muslim headscarf, including the decision of the Belgian city of Ghent to enforce such a ban on civil servants; the decision of the Danish Government to introduce a law banning judges from wearing religious symbols, such as a Muslim headscarf; and related information, including the announcement by two international associations of judges that they support the Danish legislative initiative.
Several other items also deal with Islam/Muslims, such as the acknowledgement by Copenhagen that it is increasingly worried about the consequences of the call in Muslim countries for the boycott of Danish products in retaliation against the decision of Danish newspapers to reprint the controversial Mohammed cartoons last February; the ruling of a first instance court in Germany that a Muslim girl must take part in her school's swimming lessons; the conclusion by a German court that Milli Gorus, a fundamentalist Islamic Turkish organisation, is not extremist; an Italian opinion poll in which 55% of respondents expressed negative views on Muslim immigrants.
Also included in this section are articles covering the debate in Denmark on whether to introduce a new citizenship test because of criticisms that the present one is far too easy; Germany's apparent lack of attraction for foreign students; yet another so-called honour killing in Germany; testimony before a US parliamentary committee by German-born Murat KURNAZ who was abducted by mistake and detained and tortured by the US authorities for four years; the rise of the far-right Swedish Democrats who are now more popular than the Christian Democrats; number of legally residing foreigners in Spain has exceeded the four million level; decision of the Spanish region of Valencia to introduce an "integration contract"; statistical evidence that the UK may be becoming a country of emigration.
Subscribe to the MNS More about the MNS
