Shabana Mahmood to hold talks with EU over law enforcement cooperation

UK home secretary’s meeting comes after PM said he wanted to rejoin European law enforcement databases

The UK home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, will meet the EU’s home affairs commissioner on Monday for further talks just days after Andy Burnham said he wanted to rejoin European law enforcement databases from which the UK has been locked out of since Brexit.

According to the European Commission, they will discuss “migration, border management, law enforcement cooperation and counter-terrorism”, with the latest Frontex data published on Monday showing a 43% decline in small boats crossing the Channel.

It will be the second time Mahmood has met Magnus Brunner in two months and comes amid an increase in engagement between London and Brussels since Andy Burnham announced he would use an upcoming EU-UK summit to “lay out to the country” what he believes are the “different options for Britain’s long-term relationship” with the EU.

Brunner said “the UK’s contribution is indispensable” to continuing efforts to suppress irregular migration after the EU introduced a suite of new laws aimed at speeding up asylum decisions and deportations.

On the agenda for Monday’s meeting will be talks on the UK rejoining some of the police and security databases it was locked out from after Brexit and rejoining a new database, Eurodac, centring on migration.

Last week Burnham told MPs that “one of the most positive aspects of my meeting with [the European Commission] president [Ursula] von der Leyen in New York, was her openness to the conversation about restoring data sharing on immigration across the UK, across Europe”.

He said it was “control” that the UK “lost” and should get “more attention” in the debate about Brexit. “I will work hard to see if we can get a practical arrangement on that very issue at the summit in November,” Burnham said.

Brunner will also meet the MI5 director general, Ken McCallum, and visit the National Counter Terrorism Security Office, as well as meet senior officials from the UK’s child sexual abuse centre to discuss joint efforts to tackle such crimes.

He has also been chosen to deliver a lecture at King’s College London on migration and asylum, where he will talk about the impact of the EU’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum, a framework of 10 pieces of legislation overhauling how the EU manages its borders, processes asylum applications and shares information among member states.

Brunner will tell those he meets that the new laws have already had a significant impact along with a shift in political priorities around migration in key countries such as Germany, Italy and France.

He said the “reforms are paying” off in the UK too, with illegal crossings down 43%.

“We must stay on this course, including along all relevant migration routes, and the UK’s contribution is indispensable,” he said. “We have put our European house in order. Illegal crossings at our external borders are down 55% over two years, with a further third this year, and asylum applications are at record lows in the countries that used to be main destinations.”

One key database the UK wants access to is Eurodac, a new platform which collects fingerprints and facial images of asylum seekers from the age of six, and security flags for people linked to terrorism or serious crime.

Another is the Schengen Information System (SIS), which contains data on missing persons, stolen goods, vehicles and number plates, and fugitives crossing internal EU borders. About 20m searches are made daily on the SIS mostly on cars

The Home Office has not commented.

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Source: www.theguardian.com