Safe Third Countries: Extending the EU Asylum and Immigration Policies to Central and Eastern Europe by Sandra s> Lavenex (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 387 the main means of fertilitycontrol. This is particularlyimportant given the strong association between lack of contraception and maternal, infant and perinatalmortality(Kovacs, p. 9 I). Moreover there is an absence of integration of health and education, in particularsex education, and a similarlackof coordinationprevailswith regardto linksbetween health care and police and social services. These points, and general considerations of economic dislocation , are not part of a sustainedanalysisor a unified theme developed in particularchapters. Despite the recognition of variation between and within countries,and numerouschartsand tablesto illustratethe former,there is no sustained comparative analysis of the reasons for such differences. The political, social and economic context of post-Communist transformation appearsonly at the margins.The particularissuessurroundingredefinitionof gender roles and the specific impact of this profound change on women are addressednot at all. Moreover, the solutions offeredare either obvious or wildly unrealistic.In the first category are pleas for the establishment of efficient and sensitive family planning services and free contraception. The second includes recommendationsfor a qualityassuranceprocess,includingsetting'standards for quality of care in structure, process, and outcomes' (Lindmark,p. 30). Scholarsand otherinterestedpersonswillfindlittleto stimulatetheirinterest. Department ofGovernment FRANCESMILLARD University ofEssex Lavenex, Sandra. SafeThirdCountries. Extending theEU Asylum andImmigration Policiesto Central andEastern Europe. Central European University Press, Budapestand New York,i999. xii + I89 pp. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ? 13.95 (paperback). THE aim of this book is to demonstrate that the European Union's (EU's) currentasylumregimewhich isgearedtowardscombatingillegalimmigration, weakensthe principles,normsand rulesof internationalrefugeeprotectionby impeding the entry of asylum seekers and that it establishes a system of negative redistributionfor handling asylumclaimsthat impactsupon Central and EasternEuropean Countries (CEECs).Additionally,the fieldsof asylum and immigration, although not originallypart of the EU's agenda, now play an increasinglyimportantrole in the pre-accessionstrategydeployed vis-a-vis CEECs, and this, the author argues, may place significantobstacles to swift enlargementof the EU and to the realizationof the free movement of persons between the old and new member states. The CEECs (including the EU membership candidates -- Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as well as other states of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe) now face the conflicting requirements of sealing their borders and, at the same time, upholding the normsof the internationalrefugeeregime. Sandra Lavenex charts the changes that have taken place in the international refugee regime particularlysince the Second W'Vorld WVar. A useful backgrounid isgivento the adoptionby manystatesofthe Refugee Convention 388 SEER, 79, 2, 200 I of I95I and itsextension by the Protocolof I967, both documentsunderlining a willingness to institute governmental recognition of refugee phenomena, if never leading to a complete recognition of a right of asylum. She detects that a change in the internationalfocus occurredwhen Westernstatesbegan to be faced with increasing numbers of asylum applications from non-Europeans, in a context in which most countries had declared officially against labour immigration.Combined with theprospectof droppinginternalborderswithin the EU that member states had undertaken as part of the Single Market project,thismotivateddiscussionand moves towardsthe restrictiveregulation of refugeemigrationamong EU states. Initial moves among EU states in the field of asylum, as reflected in the Dublin and the second Schengen Conventions of I990, concentrated on shifting responsibilityfor asylum claims by the adoption of rules apparently geared towards avoiding multiple asylum applications in different states, effectively preventing intra-EU migration for asylum seekers. These have been furtherdevelopedbytheadoptionofavarietyofnon-bindinginstruments among EU statesthrough more or less secret discussionsin exclusive fora the author remains very concerned by the generally undemocratic character of norm setting in this context, and points to the concentration of power in Interior Ministries, and away from national and European Parliamentsand even Foreign and Social Affairs Ministries. Thus different rules have been developed to level down asylum guarantees especially by concentrating on preventing or limiting access to determination procedures and facilitating faster expulsion measures. Notably, norms have been accepted to the effect that non-EU countries should be identified as targets to which unsuccessful applicantsshouldbe expelled (especiallyunderthe 'safethirdcountry'or 'safe countryof origin'rules),and thesehave been bolted down with a criss-crossof bilateral readmission agreements under which CEECs are made liable to receiveexpellednationalsand alienswho havepassedthroughtheirterritories. The scale of the impact of such agreements can be appreciated when the author tells of 8s,ooo people who were expelled from Germany to...