EC set to fence out refugees: Rights bodies have criticised moves to speed repatriation of asylum-seekers in Europe, writes Andrew Marshall

Immigration rules adopted by European Community ministers on Monday will force countries outside the EC to toughen their rules against refugees, preventing legitimate asylum-seekers from having their claims heard.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was considering its response to the Community's meeting yesterday, and early indications were that the organisation had several outstanding points of concern.

A letter was written to Kenneth Clarke, the Home Secretary, who chaired the meeting. Some of its points were answered. But officials of the UNHCR said yesterday that others were not taken fully into consideration.

The EC adopted a resolution on what it calls 'third host countries' - states through which refugees pass on their way into the Community. 'The purpose of this resolution . . . is to meet the concern arising from the problem of refugees and asylum-seekers unlawfully leaving countries where they have already been granted protection or have had a genuine opportunity to seek protection,' the summary released after the meeting says.

The resolution may later be turned into a legally binding convention. It would mean that where refugees had come into the EC from outside via a third country, they could then be sent back if the third country was deemed to be safe.

This would mean that the EC had effectively created a cordon sanitaire around itself. Combined with an emphasis on safe havens, and forcing asylum-seekers to seek redress in their own states, it amounts to throwing a ring-fence around the Community. Since no EC country borders Bosnia, for instance, the agreement would mean that refugees from the war- torn republic could be kept in the nations that do.

But this runs the risk of putting more of the weight of the crisis on the countries that are already labouring under the heaviest burdens - Hungary, Slovenia and Austria, for example. It is unclear what criteria will be used to judge third host countries. But refugee organisations are concerned that if this does not include the most stringent tests of their asylum policies, refugees may be sent back to countries which would then merely repatriate them to the places they first fled from.

In Croatia, for example, there has been concern that the government has in the past forcibly repatriated legitimate asylum-seekers. At the same time, the new rules, combined with tougher restrictions on who can move into the EC, may push eastern European countries to establish tougher regimes. Otherwise some may fear that they will become the last resort for refugees pushed eastwards by war, civil strife and economic turmoil, but unable to move any further westwards.

Asylum laws throughout Europe may thus converge on the toughest standards. Several of the eastern European countries are reconsidering immigration and border policy. The minister for international relations of the Czech republic, Josef Zieleniec, was in London yesterday for discussions with Britain.

He has said that the new country's immigration rules must strike a balance between being too open and too restrictive. A senior official in the Interior Minstry has estimated there are already between 100,000 and 150,000 illegal immigrants in Czechoslovakia.

Part of the problem is that the Community has adopted new rules which affect its neighbours without consulting or informing them, said refugee officials. Even the UNHCR was only partially involved in the new system.

As well as the third host country rules, the EC also adopted a resolution on manifestly unfounded applications for asylum, and a report on countries in which there is no serious risk of persecution.

Refugee and human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, the Refugee Council and the European Consultation on Refugees and Exiles, warned yesterday that the rules contravened the spirit, if not the letter, of existing international law.

Diplomats from countries affected by the Yugoslav refugee crisis were adversely critical yesterday of the EC's stance on the Yugoslav crisis in particular. It is 'a narrow and short-sighted policy', said one. Aid has been insufficient, and there has been too little emphasis on burden-sharing, said another. The result would undoubtedly be a tightening of immigration policy, he added.