EU aid chief proposes migration plan for Africa

The European Union's aid chief proposed a 40 million euro ($52 million) fund on Thursday to help manage and streamline African migration to Europe. EU aid and development Commissioner Louis Michel told an Africa-Europe migration conference that the movement of thousands of Africans to Europe was a natural phenomenon, which should not be demonised.
He said efforts to manage African migration, due to begin in 2007, would also seek to increase the supply of jobs in Africa by promoting investment in labour intensive sectors there.
The plan, to be run in partnership with African countries, would also seek to lower the cost African emigrants face in sending remittance funds and investment capital back home, he told the final day of the two-day meeting of African Union (AU) and European Union (EU) interior ministers.
Michel said he envisaged the creation of a network of migration bureaux around Africa that would seek to regulate the supply of African labour according to European demand for jobs. "This approach it seems to me would have the enormous advantage of removing this issue from the vicious circle of sensationalism," he said.
Illegal migration is a thorny issue in Europe, where some politicians have campaigned against it to popular effect. Some economists say more immigration to Europe is needed to make up for falling birth rates.
Africa has urged Europe to be more open to legal migrants and argues a crackdown on migrants, without more development aid, will only push the flow to other places.
European governments, some of them under pressure at home to toughen immigration policy, have accused African counterparts of failing to fulfil accords pledging to combat illegal migration.
The conference ended with the publication of a joint communique that contained a raft of measures couched in general terms intended to boost co-operation on controlling illegal migration and facilitating legal migration.
It said both continents reaffirmed that they had a duty to cooperate fully, including on the return of illegal immigrants to their countries of origin in a human and orderly manner. "Returns should always be carried out in dignity and with respect for human rights," Finnish Interior Minister Kari Rajamäki said. Finland holds the rotating EU presidency.
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi told the interior ministers on Wednesday that migration was an age-old fact of life that governments must accept if they want to manage the flow of job-seekers moving from Africa to Europe.