EU to open job centre for legal African migrants
Source: Reuters
By David Brunnstrom BRUSSELS, Jan 25 (Reuters) - The European Union will open the first job centre for legal migrant workers from Africa next month, the EU's justice chief said on Thursday, while appealing to EU states to provide resources to combat illegal immigration. The experimental centre in Mali would be the first of a planned network aimed at matching supply of legal migrant labour for low-skill sectors such as agriculture, public works and tourism to demand in EU states, Franco Frattini said. "People can have guaranteed periods of work and illegal undeclared labour will be combated in a very stringent way," Frattini told a European Parliament committee. "We want migrants to come here legally then go back to their countries of origin when their contracts have ended," the EU commissioner for home affairs and justice said. The centres are part of an EU drive in 2007 to control a big surge in illegal migration to Europe while meeting a need for low-skilled labour. It also seeks to increase jobs in Africa by promoting investment in labour-intensive sectors there. The legal migration effort required EU states to declare quotas for the migrant workers they needed, Frattini said, adding he hoped for progress in ministerial talks next month. The EU has been struggling to contain illegal migration to Europe by Africans searching for jobs and a better life. More than 31,000 sub-Saharan migrants reached Spain's Canary Islands last year, six times as many as in 2005. Malta and Italy faced similar problems. Thousands of would-be migrants are believed to have died during their perilous journey. The executive European Commission sees quotas as leverage to persuade African countries to take back illegal migrants. Some EU states are wary of such a system, but Frattini said that in ministerial talks this month in Dresden, EU states showed a "concrete availability ... to give us the political leverage to negotiate, so I have some hopes". He said he could not say how many migrants might be involved in the legal scheme. "In my own country, we talk about 400,000 people -- that's for Italy," he said. "But I don't know how many migrants are expected in Germany or in Belgium and so on." He called on the 27 EU states to announce by a mid-February ministerial meeting how many boats and helicopters they would provide to help the fledgling EU border agency Frontex. "I strongly hope that ministers will respond in a very positive way," he said. "If not, a blaming and shaming exercise will be possible in this case." "If we wait until next summer, I think there will be problems ... We will go into the summer completely unprepared." Frattini said Frontex was currently a tiny operation with just 60 members of staff. "We do need more resources that need to be provided by the member states."
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