EU partners accuse Britain of panicking over immigration

Launch of meeting marred by rift over punitive immigration plan

A summit designed to forge a new European consensus on immigration got off to a shaky start yesterday when the Prime Minister of Belgium, Guy Verhofstadt, dismissed asylum policies being introduced in Britain as a "panic reaction".

With immigration top of the agenda for today's EU summit in Seville, Mr Verhofstadt's comments are likely to worsen existing divisions among member states on the issue.

In an interview in the Belgian daily De Morgen, Mr Verhofstadt held up his country's record on immigration as an example, arguing that it had managed to cut the number of asylum-seekers to below 20,000 in 2002 from 42,000 two years ago without undermining people's right of asylum.

"We just wanted to prevent our country being abused by human traffickers. That sounds a lot more sensible than the current panic reactions in certain countries, which are adopting measures which go too far," Mr Verhofstadt said. "I would not describe what is happening in the United Kingdom right now as a move towards the right, but a typical panic reaction of a government that has realised there are 100,000 refugees on its doorstep."

EU leaders usually avoid commenting on internal policies of other member states. But the attack was apparently provoked by the British Government's plans to provide accommodation centres for would-be refugees as part of a plan to speed up asylum claims. Some Labour MPs objected to the plans because the children of asylum-seekers would be educated at the centres rather than in mainstream schools.

At the summit, Jose Maria Aznar, the Prime Minister of Spain, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, aims to get firm commitments on measures to implement a common EU asylum and immigration policy by the end of this year. The plan, most of which was agreed in principle at a summit in Tampere, Finland, in October 1999, has been held up by disagreements among ministers.

Earlier this year EU justice and interior ministers reached an accord on the first part of the slow-moving package: setting minimum reception conditions for those claiming asylum – to prevent would-be refugees "asylum shopping".

Among the initiatives likely to be agreed at Seville are increased co-ordination at the EU's external borders, closer co-operation on visas and a timetable for reaching a common definition of asylum.

EU leaders want to revamp the ineffective Dublin Convention, which lays down which member state should process asylum applications, and would allow the UK to deport many asylum-seekers to have their claims considered in the first EU country they entered.

Most controversial is the idea, proposed by Britain and Spain, of threatening sanctions against non-EU countries that do not co-operate in tackling illegal immigration. Yesterday, Tony Blair launched an eve-of-summit drive to "sell" the plan by stressing that far-right parties could only be defeated if issues such as asylum were tackled head on. "We need to have a system with proper rules that are fair," he said.

* Germany's opposition conservatives pledged yesterday to take Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's government to court over a new immigration law, in a move bound to make immigration a main issue in the autumn general election. The legislation, scheduled to come into force in January, aims to speed up asylum procedures and encourage an influx of skilled foreign workers.