Raising the blue card

French president Nicolas Sarkozy has built his political career on anti-immigration policies but he is expected to find it harder to turn tough talk into action at EU level. Martin Banks reports

Anew European pact on immigration and asylum focuses on sharing information on legal immigrants, tighter border controls and extra help for EU countries on Europe’s poorly policed eastern and Mediterranean frontiers.

This proposal, which also stipulates that illegal immigrants can be detained for up to 18 months and face a re-entry ban of up to five years, largely pulls together existing EU plans and looks to be the most easily achievable part of France’s package on immigration.

But the prospects for other aspects of the package appear less rosy. For example, Spain has already forced France to rethink Sarkozy’s calls for EU-wide integration contracts for new immigrants, which would oblige them to learn the local language as well as European values such as gender equality and religious tolerance.

In addition, French plans to ban national amnesties of illegal immigrants (two million migrants were regularised in Spain and Italy between 2003 and 2007) have also run into trouble.

Despite such setbacks, France has firmly placed the immigration issue close to the top of its list of priorities for the coming six months and another flagship proposal is what Paris calls a blue card, which would make it easier for foreign professionals to work in the EU.

German Socialist MEP Wolfgang Kreissl-Dorfler is among those who, while generally welcoming the move, voiced concern about the plan, saying there is a danger it could create a brain drain in third-world countries. He also says that the social rights of the blue card holder must also be guaranteed before the scheme gets the go-ahead.

All of this comes against a backdrop of a recent communication published by the European commission which calls for a common immigration policy for the EU27.

The commission claims that a common immigration policy should be based on prosperity, including the welfare of immigrants, solidarity, especially with the most burdened EU countries and on security, to respond to the need to improve the protection of the EU’s external borders

French immigration plans have been broadly welcomed by Maltese centre-right MEP Simon Busuttil, who, as parliament’s rapporteur on the issue, is tasked with the key job of drawing up a report establishing parliament’s position on the communication.

He told the Parliament Magazine, “Immigration repeatedly emerges in opinion polls as a top concern for citizens. Europe therefore urgently needs a common immigration policy that works. It can only get there if we give Europe the tools to work. For too long this has not been the case and this is why EU immigration policy has moved in fits and starts.

“I hope to give new energy to this process. I want to embark on a wide consultation and public awareness exercise and I want to hear what people have to say. This policy must be based on what the people expect from us.”

Busuttil, one of just a handful of Maltese MEPs, comes from a country which, he says, has been particularly hit by illegal immigration. So far this year, Malta has registered a 36 per cent rise in the number of illegal migrants, mostly coming from north Africa.

But even this pales into relative insignificance when compared with countries such as Italy (133 per cent rise) and Greece (137 per cent). For Busuttil, French immigration plans strike the right balance between tackling illegal immigration and increasing opportunities for legal entry to the EU.