Visa, Asylum and Immigration Policy

Visa, asylum and immigration which form part of the wider policy field of justice and home affairs (JHA) are relatively new areas of European policy-making. The original text of the Treaty of Rome did not contain any provisions on the co-ordination or harmonisation of visa, asylum and immigration matters. The necessity to deal with these issues in a European context was first mentioned in the Tindemans Report of 1975. However, it received more significant attention during discussions concerning the elimination of internal border controls, following the European Council in Fontainebleau in June 1984. As a result, the Single European Act of 1986, which mandated the creation of an area without internal frontiers, was accompanied by a political declaration stipulating co-operation in matters of entry and stay of third-country nationals. To continue discussions on compensatory measures necessary for the abolition of frontier controls, the Ad Hoc Group on Immigration was set up in 1986 which, as its greatest success, conducted negotiations leading to the signing of the Dublin Convention of 1990. With the Maastricht Treaty, asylum and immigration as well as most of visa policy came into the Union framework, which attributed this policy to the sphere of intergovernmental co-operation within the third pillar of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). Only two aspects of visa policy in Article 100c came into the EC Treaty.