Asylum and immigration policy: mutual information procedure concerning Member States measures in these areas

 The committee adopted the report by Patrick GAUBERT (EPP-ED, FR) broadly approving the proposed decision on the establishment of a mutual information procedure concerning Member States' measures in the areas of asylum and immigration. It adopted a number of amendments under the consultation procedure.

MEPs felt that it was important to establish the exchange of information not only at administrative level but also at the political level, within the Council. They accordingly proposed that the information exchanged between national administrations be relayed at political level, with the Commission drawing up a twice-yearly report summarising the contents of the reports forwarded by the Member States. This report should be forwarded to Parliament and the relevant services of the Council "with a view to providing the political authorities with a basis for their exchanges of views".

The committee also introduced a number of changes to the procedure for the exchange of information between national administrations:

- Member States should inform the Commission and other Member States of measures which they have already taken as well as those which they intend to take in the areas of asylum and immigration which may have an impact on other Member States' migration policies, "such as diverting or attracting migratory flows to or from another Member State". They should also provide information on "measures relating to legal immigration and the fight against illegal immigration likely to have a significant impact on other Member States, no later than when they are presented for adoption";

- each Member State should ensure that the measures, decisions and evaluations it transmits through the network are available "in one of the most frequently used official languages of the Community other than its own";

- Member States should supply data concerning the state of play as regards their national law in the areas of asylum and immigration, thus creating a basic 'data bank';

- the network should be open to the public amd should offer a machine translation function into all official EU languages or, at least, the most widely used ones. A secure access point for the network should be created at the European Parliament for the use of Members.

Lastly, the committee called for the new procedure to be evaluated after two years, rather than after three years as proposed.