Ireland seeks common EU asylum laws

EU countries will seek a common approach to asylum seekers, and failure to deal with the issue could give rise to "a right-wing backlash and racist politics", Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell said yesterday.

Mr McDowell, whose country holds the EU presidency, is chairing a two-day meeting of justice and home affairs ministers starting in Dublin yesterday to discuss cross-border issues including asylum and immigration.

"We hope... to establish for the first time a proper legal basis for a common approach right across Europe to asylum seeking," Mr McDowell told Irish state broadcaster RTE.

"A failure to deal with migration of asylum seekers and the like could give rise to a right-wing backlash and racist politics," he added.

It is five years since EU leaders first agreed to establish a common policy on asylum and immigration, and Ireland's will be the seventh EU presidency to attempt to put it into action.

Mr McDowell said 90 per cent of asylum applications in Ireland, which cost the Irish taxpayer €340 million in 2003, were "unfounded".

The EU ministers will also discuss improving cross-border police cooperation to fight organised crime as the 15-member bloc takes in 10 new states on May 1, mostly ex-communist states in eastern and central Europe.

Daunted by the number of economic migrants, Ireland recently tightened up its policy, closing a loophole giving non-nationals residency rights if their children were born in the country.

The UN refugee agency will ask rich EU states to help poorer new members from eastern Europe cope with rising numbers of asylum seekers, officials said.

The idea was dismissed in advance by the EU's biggest paymaster Germany, which said new members had to accept the fact that EU membership had its disadvantages as well as advantages.

"You cannot... just take the advantages and then expect the costs to be paid by the rest of the Union," Germany's Otto Schily said ahead of talks between the EU ministers and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers.

"We do not want to increase our contribution." Some of the new members are experiencing sharp increases in asylum applicants ahead of May 1 but lack adequate facilities to cope with the flood.

According to the United Nations, newcomer Slovenia saw a 92 per cent increase in the number of asylum claims last year.

A UNHCR spokesman said Lubbers would argue that it was in the interests of the current 15 EU member states to share the financial burden of dealing with asylum seekers.

There was a risk the asylum systems in the new members might be overwhelmed and asylum seekers would move on to the old EU member states, spokesman Diederik Kramers said.

Mr Schily said the EU and Germany had financed programmes to help the newcomers deal with asylum seekers. He favoured strengthening border controls rather than giving more cash to the new members.

Mr McDowell said EU ministers had agreed to spend €30 million on returning migrants to their countries of origin, adding that the money would be used to reintegrate them once they were home.