european parliament « Prospect Magazine

The EU needs to think again about asylum

Brian Semple

Pagani detention centre in Greece, where 47 minors have been on hunger strike due to poor conditions

Tuesday’s raid by French police of the ‘jungle’ camp of asylum seekers in Calais was welcomed by Britain’s cabinet ministers, with home secretary Alan Johnson describing his “delight” at the “swift and decisive” operation, while immigration minister Phil Woolas deflected criticism from human rights groups by saying: “If they were asylum seekers they would have claimed asylum in France or in the first country they came to.” He added that “genuine refugees” would be protected in the first country they came to, and the rest could go home.

The fact is however that Woolas has no idea how many genuine refugees there were among the estimated 1,500 people living in the camp because of the skewed and inconsistent EU policy that is preventing many asylum seekers from having their applications heard fairly, or, in some cases, heard at all.

European protocol on immigration was enshrined in the Dublin Regulation in 2003, which dictates that immigrants from outside the EU must claim asylum in the first country that they reach (based on the illusion that every state provides equal standards of protection to asylum seekers). The idea behind the policy was to cut down on asylum seekers applying to more than one nation for asylum, while also ensuring that each case is “meaningfully heard”.

Dealing with the BNP: Britain must learn from French mistakes

A useful lesson: Jean Marie Le Pen’s National Front party is now in decline

The British National Party’s capture of two seats in the recent elections for the European Parliament has given the BNP both a new level of representation and a significant boost to its coffers. More money still will be on offer if the disparate forces of the far right are able to cobble together a unique European parliamentary grouping of their own.

Though the BNP’s total vote actually went down in the two constituencies where it won seats, this was clearly a breakthrough of sorts. But does it mark a significant new departure point for the far right in Britain or could its appeal prove just as resistible as that of similar parties in the past?

The Euro Elections: Forget UKIP, vote pirate

Prospect

Swedish pirates: waging war on copyright

Election watchers are predicting a boom for Britain’s minor parties in this thursday’s June 4 European election, as grumpy voters punish the big boys for their lavish expenses. Yet even as they stand to make minor breakthroughs in the UK, the likes of UKIP and the BNP may still have cause to gaze jealously across the North Sea, where a rather different upstart is threatening to take over the ship of state. In Sweden, a force known as the Pirate party had (at the time of writing) grown to become the country’s third largest political organisation by membership.