Protests will take place in Brussels on 30 November and 1 December 09 as the EU ministers of interior and justice meet to agree the new ‘Stockholm Programme’.
Every five years, the interior and justice ministers of the EU adopt new directives for a common domestic policy. In 1999, the Tampere Programme focussed discussions on co-ordinated policies relating to the increasing control of populations both within and travelling to the EU. Much of the discussion emphasised ‘management of migration flows’, a euphemism for the selection of migrants who are ‘desirable’, in economic terms to EU member states, combined with a general increase of restrictions on movement into the EU, strengthening what has become known as ‘Fortress Europe’.
The Hague Programme of 2004 increased surveillance and repression within the EU, under the guise of creating an ‘area of freedom, security and justice’. The guidelines of 2004 are already being implemented by many EU member states: new biometric identifiers in identity documents, increased data retention (such as telephone and internet records), expansion of existing databases and shared access, for example. Alongside this, the Hague Programme intensified attacks on migrants, with policies leading to the construction of EU-wide Border Agency “Frontex” and the interception of refugees and other migrants already in their home countries. At both Tampere and the Hague, ‘harmonising’ policy on asylum across the EU was on the agenda. This has generally meant increasingly harsh policy and treatment of those seeking asylum. As the British Refugee Council noted, from their perspective, ‘the process of harmonisation has been a relentless downward spiral to the lowest common denominator’.
The new Stockholm Programme sets the agenda for EU justice and home affairs and internal security policy from 2010 to 2014 and will extend militarised border controls, discriminatory immigration policies, mandatory and proactive surveillance regimes and an increasingly aggressive external security and defence policy. It claims to be about building up the ‘area of freedom, justice and security’. But in fact it will continue to implement an even tighter regime of surveillance and control and will promote a securitisation of social life, undermining all civil rights and privacy despite contrary claims.
Policies to be discussed in Stockholm include development and standardization of police databases, a central population register, “cross-border online search”, more control of the Internet, increased satellite tracking, risk analysis “software, “e-borders” and “e-justice”, common deportation planes and flights, new refugee camps in “third countries”, amongst others.
As the negotiation process began earlier this year, Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, commented: ‘What is new is the clear aim of creating the surveillance society and the database state. Future generations, for whom this will be a fully developed reality, will look back at this era and rightly ask, why did you not act to stop it.”
Earlier this year, Amnesty International lobbied those taking part in the discussions, on the basis that the proposals do not address ‘persisting human rights problems within the EU’, whilst the European Civil Liberties Network has called for active civil society engagement and opposition to the Stockholm Programme.
Other grassroots groups have called for action whilst the discussions are in progress.
The callout for action against the Stockholm Programme notes: ‘Those most affected are refugees and migrants, denounced and criminalized as ‘illegals’ and hunted by national borderguards and the EU-agency Frontex. With the ‘road map of Stockholm’ the EU and national governments go on to escalate their border regimes to a real war as Frontex’ role in militarising the borders will be strengthened once again. Many thousand people have died and drowned trying to cross the borders of Europe over the last years, hundreds of thousands have been detained and deported. Refoulement is a daily practice at all hot spots of the EU external border : from Hungary and Slovakia to Ukraine, from Greece to Turkey, from Italy to Libya and from Spain to Morocco. The western European Schengen states and Britain are the driving forces in externalising migration control. Through the Dublin regulations people who seek asylum from persecution and manage to evade the border controls and reach European soil are made to stay in or are being forced back to the Eastern and Southern EU-countries.
Refugees are fleeing war zones and persecution but also all forms of devastation. Leaving poverty and misery, migrants are looking for a better life and perspectives. Western industries are responsible for a historical climate catastrophe, just accelerating impoverishment. Economical weapons from the global north cause destruction and displacements all over the global south. A separation between movements of flight and migration is not possible anymore, and both clearly reflect and challenge the complex system of global injustice’.
The callout concludes: ‘A “free, just and secure’ Europe would look entirely different:
* it needs an extension of protection for refugees, including any life-threatening circumstance;
* it needs access for every person to a better asylum system in the country s/he has chosen by him/herself;
* it needs legal options to migrate to better and safe living conditions;
* it needs the right to move and stay for every human being regardless of origin or identity.
All these needs are not more than first steps for another Europe in a world with equal global rights on a social and political level’.
Actions, meetings and panel debates in protest at the Stockholm programme will take place on Monday 30th November and Tuesday 1 December in Brussels, as the negotiations are in progress. Stop another 5 year program of death and detention! Refugee Protection and Migrants Rights instead of a brutal EU-Border-regime! No to the repressive Stockholm program!
More info at
http://stockholm.noblogs.org/
http://stockhom.noblogs.org/gallery/5439/0905_english.pdf
www.statewatch.org/analysis/eu-future-group-the-shape-of-things-to-come.pdf
http://www.wombles.org.uk/article2009045238.php
http://events.ccc.de/sigint/2009/Fahrplan/events/3164.en.html
