The European Union's Migration Regime

17.Aug.02 - The EU has built a whole arsenal of anti-migrants and anti-refugee task forces. It all began with Trevi and the Ad Hoc Committee Immigration, and went on with the Schengen agreement to speed up things. Meanwhile, there are the High Level Working Group Asylum and Migration, the Strategic Committee for Migration, Borders and Asylum, the Centre for Information, Discussion and Exchange on Asylum (CIREA), the Centre for Information, Discussion and Exchange on the Crossing of Borders (CIREFI), the International Border Police Conference and others. EU police and immigration forces are occupying desks in may countries around the world and insists other countries in adjusting to European standards. Most of these agencies act confidential, outside public control, and without any accountability to democratic institutions. A whole set of secret policy making and policing instruments, consisting of bureaucrats, police officers and ministerial staff have been created united in their hostility towards migrants and refugees. Furthermore, bilateral re-admission agreements are forcefully reached through blackmailing third countries by linking development aid, trade agreements or technical support with compliance in migration matters. Correspondingly, think tanks developed a new doctrine of limited sovereignty: ‘what is needed is a new kind of imperialism, …which aims to bring order and organisation’ (Foreign Policy Centre, London). Its main starting points are ‘terrorism’, ‘drugs’ and ‘migration’ combined as legitimisation of a New European Aggression and a New Imperialism.

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