The impact of EC border policies on the policing of ‘refugees’ in eastern and central Europe

It is increasingly becoming common knowledge that one of the major effects of the Single European Act 1986 will be to increase freedom of movement for some within the internal borders of the 12 European Community member States from 1993, while correspondingly restricting the influx of ‘outsiders’. What is still lacking, however, is informed research on the extent of this ‘exclusion’ and the likely impact of such exclusionist policy on the policing and movement of ‘refugees’ and migrants from South to North and East to West. It is the intention of this paper to address some of these issues. The main rationale behind these restrictionist and exclusionist policies is, on the one hand, a fear concerning floods of refugees invading the West from both the South and the East, due to either internal strife or poverty or simply economic disparity. On the other hand, a ‘tightening‐up’ of the asylum regulations and procedures is felt necessary on the official ground of ‘too many bogus applications’ being made to circumvent visa restrictions. This raises two problems in particular. Firstly, if the EC member States are becoming increasingly exclusionary, what happens to the refugee ‘flood'? Secondly, when is an ‘economic migrant’ not a refugee, or a refugee not a migrant, or even a ‘refugee’ not a suitable case for asylum? Moreover, even though it is realized at the political level that a long‐term strategy for ‘social and economic progress in the home countries represents the most important precondition to give the people in those countries a new professional and social perspective, which will encourage them to stay in their home countries’ it is nevertheless the case, unfortunately, that through Schengen and other EC inter‐governmental structures, the emphasis on control policy would seem to be dominant. Now that Hungary has joined the Council of Europe, has been a party to the 1951 (UN) Geneva Convention and the 1967 New York Protocol since March 1989, and together with Czechoslovakia and Poland has applied to join the EC, one has to wonder whether the ‘Cold War’ border between East and West is being shifted further East to become a ‘Closed ‘ border.