By Bruno Waterfield - 17th February 2004
Europe’s justice ministers are up against tight deadlines as time runs out on a common EU asylum policy.
Key legislative planks to a European refugee policy must, under the Amsterdam EU treaty agreed in 1999, be sealed by the end of April this year.
But ongoing domestic “sensitivities” and protracted EU haggling over two proposed directives on refugees could see Europe’s high profile asylum plans thrown into disarray.
One day has already been cut from “extremely complicated” negotiations set to carry over at a council of justice ministers on Thursday and Friday this week.
Continued German problems with legislation seeking to set an EU definition of a refugee have scuppered the February 20 talks.
The Berlin government, the opposition, and Germany’s two houses of parliament remain bitterly divided over the impact of EU law on national legislation.
Compromise is not expected until March, and may not yet materialise, putting a hold on talks as the clock ticks toward the deadline.
Ireland which holds the EU’s rotating presidency is stepping up efforts to find agreement.
A series of political discussions has been tabled in a bid to establish agreement on fundamental issues such as rights of appeal for asylum seekers.
But EU presidency sources confirm that “we still have quite a distance to go” to meet the May 1 deadline on European definitions and procedures for refugees.
“There are so many difficult issues outstanding that it is a huge challenge to try to envisage getting political agreement by May 1. But we are making major efforts,” said a source.
“If we are defeated it will not be because we did not try sufficiently hard or we were pessimistic… we are determined to keep trying right up until the deadline.”
Other national officials confirm that the pressure is on, acknowledging that all justice ministers are aware it would be “very embarrassing to have explicit treaty deadlines missed”.
“A failure would clearly say something negative about the EU’s ability to deliver,” said one diplomat.
Failure could mean more than red faces, this May ten new countries join the EU, increasing exponentially the difficulty of finding agreement on such a politically charged issue.
And legal questions could arise if proposals are seen to be outside the scope of EU law after the passing of an explicit treaty deadline.
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