International

Tomorrow we will write a little history, when for the first time five Dutch political parties – the SP, Labour Party, the Green Left, the centrist D66 and the Christian Union will together present European Parliamentary questions to the European Commission. The questions concern the Dutch government’s proposal to make illegal residence an offence for which one can be imprisoned. Broad cooperation across party lines has been possible, as it was over the continued Dutch presence in Afghanistan, because the government’s plans are both inhumane and senseless, as well as being in conflict with existing European rules.

The Dutch government wants to come over as firm and strong. If they don’t do so then the support they enjoy from the populist right-wing anti-immigration party of Geert Wilders, which has agreed to ‘tolerate’ their rule, will come under pressure. That’s why the coalition parties’ agreement already contains a commitment to take a harsher line on illegal residence by making it, under certain conditions, a penal offence. Last week the Dutch Parliament received a note from the government outlining plans for just this.

This is a disastrous course. In the struggle against illegal immigration, it’s the people who profit from it that we should be targeting – fraudulent employment bureaux who now operate on a European scale, employers who knowingly employ unauthorised residents, the people-smugglers who, without letting them know this beforehand, deliver their victims into prostitution or illegal work under inhuman conditions. By making unauthorised residence a penal offence, you can be certain that you are making it impossible for unauthorised immigrants who are the victims of exploitation ever to come forward, making it harder for the labour inspectorate and the police to tackle abusive employers or people –smugglers. The measure is also then counterproductive. It is purely symbolic legislation.

In the European Parliament I have found a great deal of interest amongst other parties. One after another they responded enthusiastically to the idea of using Brussels to give the Dutch government a rap on the knuckles, as the European Commission is also likely to find the new proposals troubling. The EU directive on return of unauthorised migrants, which was accepted by the Netherlands, sets out clear rules on their detention. If there is no question of their being involved in criminal practices, you can only put such people behind bars in the event that they are waiting to be deported to their own country or another which has said it will accept them, and they might otherwise go into hiding. You can only do this, moreover, for as long as is necessary to organise their deportation. The current Dutch policy is already in conflict with these rules, a matter on which I recently put questions to the Commission. The newly proposed policy goes still further in contradicting European law and I therefore expect our collective action to cause Prime Minister Rutte’s cabinet a great deal of trouble. Well, they should have studied the rules rather more closely before they came forward with proposals that broke them.