EU President France has dropped a proposal encouraging "integration contracts" for migrants as part of a Europe-wide migration pact after it met resistance from other capitals, diplomats said.
A draft of France's European Pact on Immigration and Asylum in January encouraged such contracts with provisions requiring those wanting to settle long-term in the EU to learn the national language and values of their host country.
However, a new June 16 draft seen by Reuters drops reference to such contracts and merely invites EU states to promote integration of migrants "in a manner ... they deem appropriate".
It adds that migration policy should be based on a "balance" between migrants' rights to education, work, security and social and public services, and duties such as learning the language.
"Quite a lot of member states felt that binding contracts would not be the right thing," said one EU diplomat of the plan, due to be discussed by EU ministers in France next week.
French Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux, speaking to visiting European journalists in Paris, declined to say if the idea had been dropped following opposition, notably from Spain.
However, he said the text was being redrafted, adding: "This is a minor point which won't prevent a major agreement."
Each country would be free to draw up such contacts with immigrants if it wished, Mr Hortefeux said.
"It's very much watered down," one diplomat said. "There was a lot of criticism and very few wanted to go down that road."
France, which has made harmonising EU immigration policy a priority of its six-month EU Presidency, wants leaders of the 27 EU states to adopt the pact in October. Mr Hortefeux said an advance was a commitment by EU countries not to carry out mass regularisation of illegal migrants in future, although there was a debate with Spain on the wording.
The migration plan is the latest French ambition for its EU Presidency which has been diluted. Paris has had to tone down ambitions for an EU-style Mediterranean Union.
Immigration is a sensitive issue in the EU, where the Commission estimates there are up to eight million illegal migrants.
Spain, which gave some 570,000 illegal migrants the right to stay and work legally in 2005, is keen to avoid any suggestion that its past policy was wrong. France and Italy also carried out large-scale regularisations in recent years.
"I don't think there's much opposition elsewhere, but I think Spain would want to drop the reference altogether," a diplomat said.
Since the 1960s, France has given hundreds of thousands of work permits to illegal immigrants, though the numbers have been on a downward trend. President Nicolas Sarkozy has spoken against broad amnesties, arguing the EU's open internal borders meant such moves affect the bloc as a whole.
Diplomats said some states with more liberal views on migrant workers wanted the French text broadened to encourage migration to fill whatever skills shortages exist, rather than just by the "highly qualified" workers currently referred to.
The European Commission argues more migration is needed to make up for the EU's aging population but EU states have been reluctant to agree joint policies on economic migration.
Under the French proposals, EU leaders would pledge to strengthen the fight against illegal migration and expel more illegal migrants, as well as confirm previous EU commitments such as a common asylum policy by 2010 and biometric visas.
EU states have already beefed up cooperation against illegal migration, creating a border agency and agreeing this year that illegal migrants could be locked up for up to 18 months. They have also agreed biometric visas for foreigners, adding to the biometric fingerprinting of asylum seekers.
More than 200,000 illegal migrants were arrested in the EU in the first half of last year, fewer than 90,000 were expelled.