Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

Integrating immigrants and minorities 95
Geddes and Guiraudon argue (2002): ‘the bottom line of the Lisbon summit was
that deeds should match words and that verbal condemnation of xenophobic parties
had to be followed by legislative acts’. The point here is that French support was
linked to a more traditional anti-racism – opposition to a far right politician
who had praised the Waffen SS – and this fitted with a French conception of what
anti-racist measures should be about. In fact, the proposals offered a civil rights
approach to the integration of migrants and minorities with a particularly strong
workplace emphasis. This was also a directive on which no member state wanted
to be seen as the back-stop. The Austrians supported the new legislation, as too
did the Germans who were keen to avoid being portrayed as the ‘bad guys’ on
this issue.
The ‘levelling-up’ that occurred with the adoption of the directives and action
programme arose because proposals for extensive and radical anti-discrimination
laws were enabled at EU level by the conjunctural factors associated with the entry
into the Austrian coalition of the Haider government and the impact this had on
both political will and the speed of negotiations. Having affirmed their political will
in the summit conclusions, the ministers left the Council working group to negotiate
behind closed doors. The European Parliament (EP) informed the Portuguese
Presidency on 8 May 2000 that it would give its opinion on the race directive first.
Until this point the race and employment directives had been discussed in parallel.
Afterwards and until political agreement was reached a month later on 6 June, the
working group focused on the race directive during long meetings. Interviews
with participants in this process have suggested that Community legislation and
jurisprudence on gender equality provided a frame of reference for the directive
on racial discrimination. Given that these were new areas, it was important for
the proposals to draw from an existing equal opportunity frame. The fact that the
references were to equal treatment also tallied with traditional French concerns
about égalité. The Portuguese presidency was also keen to see rapid progress on
the directives, which disadvantaged some interested parties. The federation of
employers’ organisations (UNICE) closely monitors EU developments. UNICE
assumed that the issue of proposals in November 1999 gave them three or four
months to reflect before issuing their viewpoint. By this time, the deal had been
done and the political will for legislation based on the Commission proposals was
present in the Council. The legislation does have major implications for employers
because its provisions on the burden of proof could generate substantial litigation
against employers, but the employers were too late to affect the content of the
legislation. The European Parliament’s influence was more significant because it
‘played the clock’. The SLG was also close to some European Parliamentarians and
used them to re-introduce proposals that the Commission had dropped.
If we try to bring the discussion together, the strategy adopted by the SLG was
successful because it drew from existing EU legal and symbolic resources related to
Treaty and legal provisions and the kinds of arguments about ‘inclusion’ that could
be made on this basis. The progress of the legislation was speeded by specific political
factors which played an important part in the generation of political will and the
‘world record’ directive. It should be remembered that this was ostensibly an