EU RESETTLEMENT PROGRAMME

The aim of the EU Resettlement Programme is to establish a single Immigration and Asylum Policy in the EU. This project is being launched by the European Commission vice-President Jacques Barrot.


Britain must make itself heard in Europe on this question. Britain has moral and legal obligations with respect to the members of the Commonwealth to consider, before undertaking new obligations to resettle refugies from unknown origins. Furthermore, France and Britain already have an enormous problem concerning illegal immigrants who try to cross the Channel between Calais and Dover. See the article in this Blog entitled "No Sangatte, just more illegal immigrants".

It seems to me that once again the EU is embarking on a project before the EU is in a position to capably control what it wants to undertake and achieve.

The first step, in my opinion, must be to secure the frontiers of the entire EU. This must be strictly supervised by the EU and should be paid for by all countries, including countries which do not have any borders with non EU countries. This is by far the biggest problem, which France and the UK experience daily. Illegal immigrants continually converge on Calais with the hope that they can hide on vehicules and reach Dover.

Secondly, another important objective must be that every citizen rightfully living in the EU must have an official EU identity card. Many countries in the EU already have national identity cards, but some like the UK, do not ! Without EU identity cards efficient controls would not be possible.

It goes without saying that there are a multitude of other considerations necessary to achieve security in the EU, not least of all, centralised computers. The EU has grown enormously in recent years and I think we must consolidate what has already been undertaken, before we embark on new projects like this one.