Immigration Control Platform

IMMIGRATION CONTROL PLATFORM

PO Box 6469, Dublin2

087 7923375

Email: icp@iol.ie     www.immigrationcontrol.org

FORUM SUBMISSION

ICP opposed to Lisbon Treaty

Immigration Control Platform opposes the Lisbon Treaty because of its implications for asylum and immigration.

Most of our worries centre around the Charter of Fundamental Rights which is absolutely sweeping in its scope [“The Charter represents a quantum leap in the formulation of rights...” Prof. Dermot Walsh, School of Law, University of Limerick].

Unlike any other international rights convention it has no denunciation or “opt-out” clause. Speaking at a seminar on another convention in NUI, Galway, Prof. Schabas of the Human Rights Centre said all conventions have this opt-out clause without which no country would sign them.

This leaves us open for all time to the interpretations of the European Court of Justice on nearly everything.

Article 18 of the Charter binds us to asylum in a way which could and surely would be interpreted by the ECJ as removing the right we currently have to opt out of the Geneva Convention on Refugees. This is a right since we signed it in 1954 before the EU even came into existence. The British government, some time ago, suggested it might have to implement that opt-out clause.

Article 18 might also be interpreted as imposing “burden-sharing” of refugees on us on the basis that if one imposed a right of asylum on a member state the quid pro quo would have to be burden-sharing (cf. the pressures on Malta).

Cathryn Costello, legal expert, has suggested that Article 15 could necessitate the right to work for asylum seekers – a huge pull factor. She has also suggested that Article 35 could undermine even the EU’s own directives on health entitlements for asylum seekers as inadequate.

Several articles in the Charter are so broad in scope as to allow for an interpretation that at a certain point (after x years) one could not deport an illegal, thereby necessitating amnesties (e.g. Article 1 on “human dignity” or Article 4 on “inhuman treatment”).

The 4th Protocol to the Amsterdam Treaty may not protect us. It currently gives us an exemption from rules on asylum and immigration. Any future government may give up that Protocol without consulting us and could well do so as a bargaining chip for something else.  This would leave us open to the full application of the charter in the area of asylum and immigration.  The Protocol has been largely hollowed out in relation to asylum, as we have opted into most directives.  The same may follow in immigration.  That leaves us open to future rulings under the Charter. 

There is already a pressure in the Lisbon Treaty in that it says that where we do not accept the amendment of a measure into which we have opted and therefore withdraw and it is considered that that makes it “inoperable for other member states or the Union”, the Council may decide that Ireland must bear “the direct financial costs, if any, necessarily and unavoidably incurred as a result of the cessation of its participation in the existing measure”.

Following from the above, we would also be very worried about the move to Qualified Majority Voting (loss of veto) in the area of asylum and immigration because of its potential future inclusion of us.

In a volatile and speedily changing world we would be mad to sign the blank cheque with no exit clause that is the Charter of Fundamental Rights. That is why Britain has opted out of it.

It should be noted that our own government was originally strongly opposed to the Charter being made legally binding and only changed when the Trade Unions insisted on it.

Our other concern is the facilitation of further enlargement especially in regard to Turkey.  It has been said that the new voting system at the European Council will facilitate the present larger membership but, of course, it will facilitate even more a further enlargement.

We are firmly opposed to the inclusion of such a huge Muslim state in the EU and to the seemingly endless expansion of the EU.

Aine Ni Chonaill

PRO