Rosemary Bechler (London, oD author): Quentin Peel has been lamenting the derailing of the Lisbon Treaty in the FT. But for a specific reason: EU members have just this week been coordinating their treatment of asylum as part of a wider plan to harmonise immigration rules - rules delayed for years because of the requirement of unanimity. As the prospect of qualified majority voting recede because of the Irish No-vote, so too does this harmonisation of immigration and asylum policy and what Peel says is 'arguably the most important single area of reform in the Lisbon Treaty'.
I have to agree with him that 'removing national vetoes on proposals for "freedom, security and justice" ' is hugely more important than 'the creation of a few symbolic jobs'. I have been a pro-European all my life, hoping that the EU would help preserve our vastly over-militarised European nation-states from any return of fascism to our continent.
But if Peel made me sit up at the breakfast table this morning it was also because Grace Davies and I have been editing and blogging on MigrantVoice On Refuge - openDemocracy's feature for Refugee Week - with our partners in the Migrant and Refugee Communities Forum in London, Oxford's Student Action for Refugees and Sheffield's City of Sanctuary - a spreading movement to 'build a culture of hospitality for refugees and asylum-seekers.' Beside the blog, recent articles include Rahila Gupta on the trafficking of women and an overview of immigration flows and states around the world by Saskia Sassen.
I have to say, I wonder if Quentin Peel has read the European Return Directive in detail, as passed by the European Parliament on Tuesday. Liza Schuster, from City University, has. Her graphic account of what the activists among our French neighbours call the 'directive de la honte' - doesn't seem to promise much by way of freedom, security or justice for any of us. As she concludes, 'Things can only get worse.' So, if the EU is only capable of harmonising downwards in a key area of policy where it is hard to believe that European member states could stoop much lower, it is hard even for a pro-European like myself to become terribly exercised over the Irish No-Vote. I don't think Mr.Guterres, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees will be too phased either - he has other things to think about with an unprecedented 25.1 million refugees under his remit.
But I do wonder what the French No-voters will make of it. Many of them probably did vote against the Lisbon Treaty out of their fears about immigration. But President Sarkosy's reaction to the Irish no-vote on Tuesday was to reassure his fellow-members of the European political class that he would be pressing ahead regardless with an action-packed agenda for France's six-month presidency of the EU that commences on July 1, starting with immigration. And today, we read in the FT that President Sarkosy has in turn been reassured by the tidings Gordon Brown brings to Paris of the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in the British parliament.
I doubt whether these reassurances will improve the French no-voters impression of European democracy, and - rather more importantly - I have no faith at all that it will make them any less fearful of immigration, immigrants and asylum-seekers.
Meanwhile, over here on MigrantVoice we have been calling for a rather different kind of democratic audit - one which asks - "Who cares for whom in this world?"
Greetings to Our Kingdom from the armies of the as yet, invisible...
