European Union leaders have successfully kick-started a programme of co-operation on justice and home affairs at their summit in Tampere, Finland, indicating that increasingly this will be the way of the future in handling approaches to asylum, immigration and cross-border crime. They have usefully clarified an improved approach to handling EU enlargement talks by giving all the candidate states an equal chance to negotiate, while accepting that not all will or can join at the same time.
More controversially, they have had a preliminary discussion on radical plans to change decision-making in advance of enlargement and to incorporate a mutual defence guarantee in the European treaties.
Much of this work implements commitments in the Amsterdam Treaty which agreed the creation of an area of freedom, security and justice as a major objective over the next few years. This summit has put it solidly on the road by giving the European Commission a detailed working schedule and concrete tasks to achieve through deepening inter-governmental co-operation rather than pooling more sovereignty. Concrete ideas include proposals to handle money laundering, including changing the burden of proof, following the success of the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau. Common asylum and immigration provisions are envisaged which will substantially co-ordinate national and EU actions.
Those concerned with the impact of such policies on human rights will increasingly have to take such EU co-operation for granted. There are well-grounded fears that the net effect could be to restrict access and curtail rights, given the attitudes prevalent in the bureaucracies and policies of many member-states. But the effort to extend EU co-operation is not in itself a cause for concern, rather the manner in which it is done. That strengthens the case for more effective supervision by the European Parliament and for entrenching rights rather than drawing up well-meaning wish lists with little effect. It will be up to campaigners on behalf of the rights of asylum-seekers to ensure this case is heard by the politicians. In Ireland that is an increasingly urgent task, given the disgraceful conditions many such people encounter when they reach our shores.
Creating an area of freedom, security and justice in Europe is intimately bound up with enlarging the EU. How to adapt decision-making to that task, is a crucial matter for negotiation in another Inter-Governmental Conference over the next year. The precise mandate for that task will be agreed at Helsinki in December. The new Commission president, Mr Prodi, has taken a vigorously maximalist line, using a report prepared by the former Belgian prime minister, Mr Jean-Luc Dehaene. It advocates more qualified majority voting in non-core areas of integration and strengthening the Commission's role. It also supports incorporating a mutual defence guarantee in the EU treaties, with an opt-out for neutral states - a position flatly rejected by the Taoiseach in Tampere. These are highly controversial proposals, which could alter the balance of the EU's institutions unacceptably so far as smaller, neutral states such as Ireland are concerned. They deserve the most serious political attention ahead of the Helsinki summit.