EU Commission set to approve draft against illegal immigration

The European Commission unveiled yesterday a plan to combat illegal immigration by instating a short-term visa system and creating rapid response teams of border guards.

The plan, outlined by EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini, is based on a voluntary scheme where member states willing to participate in the project would be asked to draw up a list of national border guards available to other countries in critical situations.

The rapid intervention teams would work on an ad hoc basis and only be deployed in times of crises to "fill any gaps in the control and surveillance performed by the national border guard service of the requesting member states," according to the EUobserver Web site. The joint operations would be conducted by the EU's agency for external border management (Frontex).

The commission says that planning such an operation is currently complicated by a muddle of different national laws in each member state governing what tasks foreign border guards can fulfill, according to BBC News Online.

It says rapid response teams should be able to patrol the border and check and stamp the travel documents of anyone crossing it. Frontex would bear the cost of the operation, though the members of the rapid reaction team would continue to receive their normal salary from the nation which employs them, according to the same source.

"Immigration policy is an area of policymaking that can only sensibly be addressed at the EU level," said Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, a spokesperson on immigration and asylum issues for the Liberal-Democratic group (ALDE).

Other top priorities to tackle illegal immigration that the commission discussed yesterday include a new system for registering the arrival and departure of non-EU citizens visiting the EU, making it easier to verify whether someone has "overstayed" his or her visa.

The proposal has been contested by other members of the commission. Thus, the European executive announced it will run a feasibility study to establish if the proposal would be welcome and what consequences this project would have on personal data protection issues.