EU Plans Immigrants' Contract

Immigrants to the EU may be asked to sign up to values of free speech and respect for all faiths in an "integration contract", Europe's largest countries said yesterday.

In a sign of a growing determination to improve the integration of new arrivals, interior ministers from the G6 group of EU countries said immigrants may be expected to learn the local language and accept they face obligations.

Wolfgang Schäuble, the German interior minister, who hosted the meeting with counterparts from Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Poland, said: "Successful integration is always something that presupposes mutual rights and obligations."

The ministers agreed to set up a working group to examine the "integration contract" first suggested by French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Britain has no plans to ask immigrants to sit a test or sign a contract. Charles Clarke, the home secretary, told Reuters Television: "What we agreed very strongly was that the values of our societies - democracy, respect for other faiths, free speech, the rule of law, free media and so on - are values which we would expect everybody wanting to settle in these countries to respect."

The proposed contract is a diluted version of a Dutch initiative. Immigrants are to be forced to familiarise themselves with the country's liberal values by watching a DVD which shows topless women on a beach and a gay couple embracing.