MNS Summary August 2007:
Subscribe to the MNS
More about the MNS
The August issue includes several interesting cases before the
European Court of Justice (ECJ) whose final rulings are awaited with much
interest. One concerns the attempt by a Dutch citizen to be reunited with his daughter,
a Surinam national, by first exercising the right of free movement in the UK.
Another deals with the questions of whether a Turkish au pair and a Turkish
student can be considered as workers within the meaning of the 1963 EEC-Turkey
Association Agreement. Two more cases deal with complaints lodged by both the
UK and Ireland after being excluded from two Schengen instruments.
Advocate general opinions on all these cases have been
made public and ECJ rulings will be handed down within less than six months.
Two cases on which rulings have been handed down
include one concerning attempts by some Member States to overturn the ECJ case
law concerning the rights of children of Turkish migrant workers to reside and
work in the host Member State even after 21 years of age and becoming independent.
The other is a case decided by the European Court of Human Rights which
concluded that France had violated the Convention when it applied double
jeopardy to one of its own citizens even though it was, in good faith, unaware
of the French citizenship of the person concerned.
National news items on immigration include:
- concern in Denmark of labour shortage on the one hand
and complaints against the hiring of Polish bricklayers on the other;
- French President’s target of having 50% of new
immigrants to satisfy needs of the country’s economy and comments by an expert;
- refusal of labour inspectors in France to assume some
of the tasks of the Aliens Police Force;
- debate in Germany on whether to grant free movement to
workers of the new EU Member States;
- migration agreement between Mauritania and Spain to
regulate migration flows;
- fast track family reunion procedure for skilled
migrants in the Netherlands;
- contents of new Aliens Act in Portugal;
- Norway faced with record number of foreign workers;
- one Swiss canton liberalises law in favour of battered
foreign spouses;
In the section on irregular migration, reporting continues on
irregular migration in the eastern Mediterranean as well as between sub-Saharan
Africa and the Canary Islands. The reporting includes Frontex’s mission, the
Nautilus II operation in which very few Member States participated and with
very little contribution.
On the national level, there is comprehensive coverage
of the efforts deployed by the Belgian authorities to expel an Ecuadoran mother
and her daughter and the strong criticisms voiced by the Ecuadoran president
and his wife, a Belgian national.
Other news items in this section include:
- unanimous call by union members of Air France-KLM to
stop using regular flights for the forceful deportation of foreigners from
France;
- UNHCR’s criticism that repeated fatal tragedies of
irregular migrants/asylum-seekers at sea has led to indifference;
- Madrid’s response to Human Rights Watch’s criticisms
of treatment of unaccompanied minors arriving on the Canary Islands;
- Madrid’s offer to set up professional training schools
in sub-Saharan Africa to discourage immigration;
- Information campaign in Cameroon to discourage
irregular migration financed by the Swiss Government;
On protection issues, the case of a Tunisian
national facing forced repatriation from Italy which suspects him of
“terrorism” is referred to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human
Rights.
National news items include:
- defiance of several local mayors in Belgium of the
Federal authorities’ request to expel rejected long-stay asylum-seekers;
- evacuation to Denmark of Iraqi interpreters having
served with the Danish continent in Iraq, as well as their family members;
- Human Rights’ watch appeal to Berlin to stop
withdrawing protection status from Iraqis in view of the continuing violence in
their home country despite the end of the regime of Saddam Hussein;
- a German court’s use of the EU’s “qualification
directive” on protection to grant asylum to an Iranian Christian woman;
- decision of an Italian court to allow a Nigerian
mother to stay because her daughter risks genital mutilation in the home
country;
- Labour politician in Malta warns that measures
implemented to combat irregular migration in the eastern Mediterranean fail to
address the problem of asylum-seekers;
- Dutch asylum policy modified to take into account a
ruling of the European Court of Human Rights concerning a Somali asylum-seeker;
- continuation of the forced repatriation of rejected
Afghan asylum-seekers from Norway, with the exception of those from unsafe
areas;
- Sweden’s new practices towards Iraqi asylum-seekers;
- Sweden receives the co-operation of Air China in
halting the arrival of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children;
- Criticisms by Christian organisations in the UK of the
“ludicrous” evaluation method of Christian converts from Islamic countries;
- Repatriation of more Iraqi asylum-seekers by Turkish
authorities.
As in every monthly issue, there are miscellaneous
items of interest, such as the decision of a court in Geneva to overturn the
conviction of an African woman who was accused of slandering five policemen by
describing the way they had treated her as “racist”; the decision of the four
most important Turkish organisations in Germany to boycott the German
Chancellor’s second integration summit; growing opposition to the building of a
mosque in Cologne; parliamentary initiatives in the Netherlands to ban the
wearing of the Muslim burqa in public and to cut off unemployment benefits to
those unemployed women wearing one; decision in Wales to slaughter a “sacred”
but sick bull infuriates Hindu community in the UK; warning of the Pope’s
private secretary of the danger posed by Islam to the European identity.
Subscribe to the MNS
More about the MNS
