Europe feels strain as illegal wave swells

By CATHERINE FIELD

Herald correspondent

PARIS - The vision of a border-free Europe is facing its greatest challenge as the 15 wealthy members of the European Union battle waves of illegal immigrants from the former communist bloc, the Balkans and North Africa.

Belgium this week inflicted a dent in the so-called Schengen Agreement, the much-trumpeted accord that scrapped internal border checks among signatory EU countries, by imposing temporary emergency frontier checks in a bid to stem the migrant flood.

After more than four years of control-free travel to Belgium from other Schengen countries, cars, trucks, buses, trains and airline flights were suddenly subject to passport and visa checks.

The Government hopes to weed out economic migrants who may try to sneak into the country to benefit from a three-week amnesty for illegal residents.

A spokesman for the EU's executive commission insisted that Belgium had the right to opt out of Schengen "for reasons of public policy or national security."

"The Belgian authorities have said that during this period they wish to reintroduce border controls to prevent ... illegal immigrants coming into Belgium to take advantage of the residence papers being offered," the spokesman said.

"They don't want smuggling networks to exploit this opportunity."

The Belgian amnesty, being offered to the estimated 75,000 illegal migrants on its soil, is the latest in a string of desperation measures that highlight Schengen's problems.

Schengen was born in 1985, at a time when former French President Francois Mitterrand and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl were driving a crusade to remove the EU's internal borders, which were a barrier to trade and helped breed harmful nationalism.

The idea behind it is that signatories impose identity checks only on their external borders.

People who are nationals of Schengenland, or who have a visa or a passport enabling them to enter one of its countries, can move freely across its internal borders as soon as they have passed through that initial check.

Since it took effect in 1985, Schengen has been signed by 10 of the 15 EU members - Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.

However, five others - Britain, Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Sweden - have kept their controls in place, dashing the hopes of EU federalists.

Much of the scepticism of the five is focused on the inability of Schengenland, especially the "Club Med" countries of southern Europe, to police their borders effectively.

Southern Spain, easily reachable by a fast boat from Morocco, has become a route for human smuggling from North Africa, while Italy's long eastern coastline is under assault from Albanians, Yugoslavs, Kosovars and Kurds.

But the German border is also vulnerable, especially when the Oder River, which marks the country's eastern frontier with Poland, runs low in the summer months and can be crossed in some places by wading. Austria, too, is targeted by highly organised smugglers bringing in Romanians and Turks.

"It's astonishing," said an Austrian immigration official.

"The smugglers are equipped with radar, infra-red gear and all sorts of high-tech detectors and means of communications, just as we are."

Those immigrants who slip through the Schengen net either file for asylum, a process that usually takes several years to complete after the appeal process has been exhausted; go underground and work clandestinely; or head for another country.

Non-Schengen countries in turn are reeling from a human assault. Nearly 300,000 people have filed for political asylum in Sweden and 264,000 in Britain. The National Criminal Intelligence Service in London believes that up to 50 gangs are involved in bringing migrants into Britain, either smuggling them in aboard trucks or taking them across the Channel by ferry, getting them to destroy their passports en route and claim political asylum when they arrive.

The immigration flow started 10 years ago, after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Since then, more than four million people, according to cautious estimates, have entered western Europe. Many are fleeing persecution but the vast majority are poor people who are simply searching for a better life.

The initial European response was tolerance. But the goodwill gradually evaporated as the influx rose, along with crime or joblessness that were blamed on illegal migrants.

Right-wing parties in Germany, Austria, France and Belgium reaped great electoral gains by thumping the xenophobic drum.

The response in Schengenland has been a series of worried moves to tighten up the external border checks, particularly at ports, and punish air and sea carriers who carry illegal migrants. That has been supported by plans for an EU-wide asylum policy and "partnership" with countries of emigration to help economic development there.

Individual countries have also legalised hundreds of thousands of migrants, hoping that this will help to root out poverty and crime among clandestine communities. France gave papers to around 80,000 illegal immigrants in 1997-98, and Italy followed suit by giving residence to 38,000.

But still they come, the poor, tired and unwanted.

And the wave is unlikely to ease as long as western Europe is stable, peaceful and prosperous and the countries on its fringe are unstable, war-torn or poor.