CRIMINALISING ASYLUM: THE EU ADOPTS THE FRENCH IMMIGRATION PROPOSALS

Last year, the French Presidency proposed four measures which would make it considerably harder for asylum-seekers to reach the EU or to stay here after entry, all in the name of combating illegal immigration (reported first on Statewatch News Online, July 2000). After a year of negotiation, two of these measures have been adopted and two are the subject of "political agreement". In many respects, the final versions of these measures are even worse than the widely criticised initial proposals and their overall impact will be to criminalise asylum-seekers and irregular migrants even more than at present. The report concludes that:

Taken as a whole, the four French proposals have been worsened, not improved, by the process of negotiation within the Council... for migrants and asylum-seekers the "area of freedom, security and justice" consists largely of measures preventing their entry and removing them from the EU"

Includes background material and all adopted/agreed texts:

THE SEMDOC WEBSITE

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PUBLIC ORDER: CIVIL SOCIETY BOYCOTTS HAGUE CONFERENCE

A conference on public order policing for representatives of the various police forces of Europe, Northern America and Australia is to take place in The Hague (The Netherlands) from 3-5 October 2001. Entitled "Maintaining public order, a democratic approach", the organisers were keen to get a "token" speaker from the protest movement to attend. Successive invitees have declined and a protest at the conference itself is likely. Includes conference agenda:

POLICING IN NORTHERN IRELAND

Press release from the Pat Finucane Centre reacting to the British Government's plan for policing reforms. The centre says it could not recommend that people join the new police service because outstanding concerns about human rights have not been addressed in the new document. A spokesperson for the Derry-based centre said:

"As the situation stands at present, the institutional factors that have led to human rights abuses in the past have not been adequately dealt with. In the absence of adequate change a fair-minded person joining the police would still have little or no impact on the type of policing experienced by the community"

The release addresses a number of outstanding problems with the proposals:
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