EU 'must Bring Immigration Laws Into Line'

France and Germany promised last night to make tighter and better coordinated European immigration laws a top priority at next month's EU summit in Seville to prevent the far right hijacking the issue to its electoral advantage.

"We are completely in agreement that the two countries should take their humanitarian obligations seriously, but we say just as clearly that there is a need to control and limit immigration," Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said after a routine working dinner in Paris with President Jacques Chirac.

"This issue must not be left to the far right, but must be dealt with with the utmost seriousness and the utmost responsibility."

Mr Schröder, who seeks reelection at the head of a Social Democrat government in September, added that the 15 EU interior ministers were working on propositions to be presented at the summit on June 21-22.

The success of the far right in recent elections in France, where Jean-Marie Le Pen collected 18% of the vote, and the Netherlands, where the party founded by the assassinated populist Pim Fortuyn is now the second biggest in parliament, has rung warning bells for mainstream politicians across Europe.

Differences between French and British immigration and asylum laws are largely to blame for the current dispute between London and Paris about the the Sangatte refugee camp near Calais.

France says British laws are too lax; Britain says French policing is inadequate.

Asked what the proposals may entail, Mr Chirac said immigration and asylum laws needed to be harmonised throughout the EU, but insisted that national legislation would not be watered down.

The EU needed "much more serious controls" on its external borders, stricter checks in individual member states, and "a far more effective war against the mafia gangs who organise immigration into our countries in the most inhumane conditions imaginable".

Development aid should be aimed more at "the need to create jobs where that is what has to be done in order to prevent this kind of immigration".

The informal Franco-German talks were the latest in the regular top-level meetings between the two countries begun after their relationship, long seen as the driving force of European integration, turned sour at the stormy Nice summit in December 2000.