EU Commission proposes burden-sharing fund

The European Commission has proposed the setting up of a "burden-sharing fund" of €2.5 billion in the area of migration and border control.

Malta has long been making diplomatic efforts to get the European Union to start recognising the need of burden sharing in the management of the EU's external borders. Those efforts now seem to be bearing fruit.

Speaking at a hearing of the civil liberties committee of the European Parliament held in Brussels, which discussed proposals for a common code of rules to control both external and internal borders of the EU, Commission official Jan De Cluster said an important part of the proposal to manage external borders would be "to institutionalise the principle of burden sharing".

Without referring particularly to any member state, Mr De Cluster said that member states carry out border controls on behalf of all the others and it was important to recognise the different burden levels of countries with external borders.

This, he said, justified the creation of a fund of €2.5 billion, to be shared among member states according to criteria such as the length of their borders and how many visas are issued annually.

The need for the EU to give concrete assistance to its border member states has been raised several times by Malta during formal EU meetings and was also the main subject discussed during a recent meeting in Brussels between the Justice and Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg and Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini. Malta has been lobbying the Commission and other member states for tangible initiatives in this area, in view of the influx of immigrants Malta has experienced over the last few years.

In 2003, the Commission proposed the creation of a European Agency for External Borders to encourage cooperation between national border surveillance agencies. This was to have started work in January 2005 but the representative of the Luxemburg Council presidency, Raoul Uenerecken, said it had been delayed as the Council could not agree on where the agency should be based. Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Estonia and Malta all want to host the agency, however the front-runners seem to be Hungary and Poland.

During the hearing, the EP's rapporteur, Michael Cashman, said he supported the creation of a common policy on managing external borders but stressed the need to develop a more human approach to third country nationals.

He said third country nationals should have the right to enter the EU if all the entry conditions were met. He added that first and second line checks should be done in a respectful and dignified manner by the border guards and national authorities should inform those rejected of the reasons for refusal, where possible in their own language.