The EU resolved yesterday to step up the fight against organised gangs using the Balkans to smuggle illegal immigrants into Europe and urged authorities in the region to do more.
EU justice and home affairs ministers agreed that a delegation, led by the Swedish Asylum and Immigration Minister, Ms Maj-Inger Klingvall, would go to Belgrade and Sarajevo later this month to press for more co-operation.
According to an internal EU paper, as many as 200,000 Chinese illegal migrants may be sheltering in Yugoslavia waiting to be smuggled to Europe.
The Balkan route is commonly used by criminal gangs to move thousands of economic migrants and asylum seekers from China, Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Romania to the West.
The EU ministers, meeting in Brussels, decided to offer both money and people to try to stem the human tide using the region as a crossing point into the EU.
Britain has started a Europe-wide initiative, co-ordinating the dispatch of up to 40 immigration and police officers to the region to help train local authorities.
The internal EU paper highlights the enormity of Europe's illegal immigration problem as up to a dozen former communist East European nations - often the key transit routes for drug and human smuggling - prepare for EU membership. Greece said it has boatloads of illegal immigrants arriving every day from the Balkans.
EU ministers were also trying to lay down common definitions and sanctions for crimes from drug smuggling and corruption to human trafficking and child pornography.
Meanwhile, the Swedish national statistics office (SCB) says the population in EU members states is dwindling because of the low rate of childbirth. And, it says, fertility in the 12 EU applicant countries is also too low to maintain their populations at current levels. Challenges posed by demographic change will be the main theme of the EU summit in Stockholm on March 23rd-24th.
"Fertility in all EU countries does not correspond to full reproduction, which means population decrease," the SCB said.
Every woman should give birth to on average 2.1 children to avoid the population falling, the SCB said. Its data showed all 15 EU countries and all 12 applicant countries engaged in accession talks failing this litmus test. Only Turkey, waiting in the wings to start negotiations on EU membership, had sufficiently high fertility.