MNS Summary September 2007:
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With little to report on legal issues on the European
level, the September issue focuses almost entirely on national developments.
Exceptions include an article on a proposal under consideration to introduce
on-line registration for visa-free travellers to the EU and another on the
European Commission’s proposal to set up a European Migration Network, which
amounts to the “rebirth” of the Information Network on Third-Country Migration
or RIMET, which the European Commission set up more than 15 years ago and which
had quite a controversial end.
Regarding migration policies, an article covers
extensively the new Irish law on family reunion which affects third-country
nationals who are family members (spouses) of EU nationals. It is almost the
inevitable consequence of the ambiguity of rulings handed down by the European
Court of Justice on family reunion cases and the European Commission has
intervened after having received numerous complaints.
Other news items in this section include:
- Denmark’s decisions to open up a little more its
labour market to third-country nationals and ease visa rules to promote
tourism;
- Berlin’s partial opening of labour market to engineers
from new EU Member States in Eastern and Central Europe;
- Protests from Ankara as new German Aliens Act is
signed into law;
- Dutch Government’s proposals to render more difficult
the integration test;
- Arrival of more than 200,000 migrant workers in Spain
last year;
- Huge hurdles for young, unmarried people wishing to
visit Switzerland;
- Harsh criticisms of UK parliamentary committee against
Government’s change of rules for skilled third-country nationals;
- Public outcry in the UK over court decision that young
convicted murderer of Italian nationality may not be repatriated; youth is
rehabilitated, does not speak Italian and has no family members there.
- Slowdown of influx of East European workers, mostly
Poles, to the UK.
The section on irregular migration is full of tragedies at
sea, not only off the Canary Islands and in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, but
also in the Aegean Sea, between the Turkish coast and the many nearby Greek
islands.
Other than sea tragedies, the other news items in this
section include:
- the continuing diplomatic rift between Brussels and
Quito over the treatment of an Ecuadoran mother and her daughter;
- strong disappointment expressed by the Scottish-based
Homeless World Cup Foundation that 15 African players had “disappeared” after
having entered Denmark;
- end to hunger-strike action of irregular migrants who
had been fasting since 25 July 2007 in Lille, France;
- French police escort of six men participating in an
expulsion operation beaten up upon arrival in Guinea. Their assailants included
Guinean policemen.
- French efforts to secure collaboration of African
nationals to curb irregular migration;
- Madrid’s plan in sub-Saharan countries to build
professional training schools in order to discourage Africans from making
clandestine journey to Spain.
On protection issues, the news items are all
national ones, such as:
- Asylum sought by members of a leading Chechen folk
music group in Finland;
- Inclusion of Iraqis and Congolese in Finnish refugee
quota for 2007;
- Finnish Supreme Court orders temporary halt to
expulsion of convicted Somalis offered protection;
- Less than 14,000 long-stay asylum-seekers in Germany
have so far received a residence permit;
- World Organisation against Torture denounces
maltreatment of Iraqi asylum-seekers in Greece;
- Influx of Serb asylum-seekers of Roma origin into
Romania;
- Criticisms of reception conditions in Malta for women
and children;
- Swiss Supreme Administrative Court decisions
concerning asylum-seekers without valid identity documents;
- Influx of Iraqi Christians into Turkey;
- attention again focused on long-stay rejected
asylum-seekers in the UK
- pressure on the UK Government to offer protection to
Iraqis having worked with British forces in Iraq;
- London High Court’s halt to the repatriation of a
group of 70 rejected Congolese asylum-seekers.
On racism and discrimination, there is extensive
coverage of the incident in an East German town when a mob, apparently driven
by racist motives, attacked and chased a group of eight Indian nationals, as
well as the fire in Italy which resulted in four Roma children being burnt
alive.
Other news items covered in this section include:
- attempt in Belgium to have a best-selling cartoon book
banned soon after a similar attempt failed in Sweden;
- claim by Cypriot Government that there is nothing to
report on racism because the problem does not exist there;
- conviction in France of a teacher for the racist
bullying of a black student;
- anti-Semitic remarks of a Polish priest and the
refusal of his hierarchy to take disciplinary measures;
- racist execution of two men in Russia posted on a
website;
- upsurge of Islamophobia in the UK.
Articles concerning Islam in western societies
continue to dominate the section on other issues, namely in Belgium, Germany,
Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK. In the UK and Germany, there are
also more cases of so-called honour killings.
The news items provoking the most controversy
include the decision by the Italian Supreme Court who approved of the beating
of a Moroccan girl by her parents because she was too westernised and the
suggestion by a retiring Dutch bishop that Christians called God “Allah” as a
conciliatory gesture towards Muslims.
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