Amnesty urges EU to ease pressure on Malta

Amnesty International yesterday called on the British EU Presidency to take immediate steps to implement refugee protection measures and provide adequate solidarity mechanisms to relieve the pressures on Malta, Spain and Italy.

The call was made just a day before a crucial meeting of EU justice ministers in Luxembourg to discuss the spate of illegal immigration affecting primarily the southern EU member states.

In an open letter to the UK Presidency, AI accused EU countries of "increasingly abandoning their responsibility to protect refugees in an effort to combat illegal immigration".

The human rights organisation said that not only was the direction of EU policy ill-guided but individual countries such as Spain may be guilty of breaking their own EU and international commitments.

In his letter, the director of Amnesty's EU office, Dick Oosting, told British Home Secretary Charles Clarke, who will be chairing today's meeting, that "faced with a series of ongoing humanitarian crises on EU territory, such as those that happened recently in Malta, Italy and Spain, EU countries have launched joint actions to deal with irregular immigration".

Amnesty said that very little collective effort is being shown to ensure refugee protection and EU proposals made so far fail to adequately address root causes.

"Shamefully, EU member states are shifting the burden of refugee protection to other countries which may be ill-equipped to deal with the ever increasing numbers of displaced people. In the process, international commitments to humane treatment and the principle of non-refoulement are being violated. The overall effect is not only to strain the EU's own credibility but to threaten the very integrity of the international refugee protection system," AI said.

The recent incidents involving illegal immigrants trying to reach the EU through Malta, Italy and Spain will be raised at today's Justice and Home Affairs Council.

EU Commissioner Franco Frattini, Vice President of the European Commission with responsibility for justice, liberty and solidarity, will report back to the ministers on the results of a technical mission sent to Spain and Morocco by the Commission to assess the situation and on measures to be taken to face up illegal immigration.

Malta, through Home Affairs and Justice Minister Tonio Borg, is also set to raise the problem of illegal immigration and call for measures to be taken by the EU in order to fight the influx of illegal immigrants from Libya.

Commission sources told The Times last week that the Commission is very worried with the situation and wants to step up measures. The sources said the support of all member states is needed on this issue and the Commission is expecting concrete ideas from member states, especially those directly involved, on what needs to be done.