IRELAND: EU justice and home affairs ministers will consider moves to co-ordinate their asylum processes and measures against organised crime at a day-long meeting in Dublin today.
The ministers are seeking to co-ordinate procedures for expelling illegal immigrants from the EU. They will seek to clear the way to implement a plan to organise joint flights of illegal immigrants from the EU back to their country of origin.
The Minister of Justice, Mr McDowell, will chair the meeting in Dublin Castle. As an informal council it will not take decisions, but will provide a forum for discussion of issues to be decided upon at a formal meeting in Brussels in the coming months.
It will discuss a planned EU directive - which ministers hope will be finalised during the Irish presidency - outlining minimum standards for the asylum process. This will cover access to the process, the right to be interviewed and to have access to interpreters and legal representation. It will also cover the detention of asylum-seekers.
The directive will cover the procedures to be followed when asylum-seekers first present themselves, including examination procedures and the criteria for prioritising and speeding up certain applications.
The ministers will consider whether the EU should draw up a list of non-EU states regarded as "safe" and whose citizens seeking asylum in the EU are presumed not to be fleeing persecution.
On the issue of organised crime, they will consider whether Ireland's Criminal Assets Bureau - showcased by the Government to its EU colleagues as a successful initiative - provides a model for EU-wide action against crime. They will also discuss whether to devise an "action plan" of proposals for partnership between the public and private sectors to tackle organised crime.
Such partnerships would include co-operation between police forces and private companies which made goods - such as CDs and branded clothing - which are regularly counterfeited by criminals.
The European Commission will give ministers a presentation on a proposal for mutual recognition by member-states of a European Evidence Warrant, which would allow the obtaining of objects, documents and data for use in criminal proceedings. It also includes requests for criminal records by one member-state to another.
The ministers are also to discuss a mechanism for dealing with small claims without obliging all such claimants to go to full and possibly expensive court hearings. Today's discussions will explore whether there is consensus to introduce such a procedure throughout the EU.