Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-15-Speech-3-041"
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"en.20000315.2.3-041"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in view of our discussion of these reports on human rights inside and outside the European Union, the time is therefore right to consider the cross-influences between the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’.
Clearly, the Union’s best tool for disseminating its human rights model is the experience of migrants. Yet our greatest failings in human rights involve these very people.
I can give you two examples of this. Firstly, there is cause for concern about the shape being taken by the readmission agreements which directly threaten fundamental rights such as the right of asylum or the right to live as a family. The Union has confirmed its attachment to the Geneva and Dublin Conventions by establishing the anti-deportation principle. It is therefore unacceptable that the readmission agreements can allow a third country national to be returned to his or her country when we know that this country more often than not does not guarantee respect for human rights and democratic freedoms. It is just as unacceptable to see families torn apart with children sometimes being left alone following the expulsion of their parents who have no right of residence, even though some have lived and worked in Europe for nearly ten years.
What image of human rights do you think they will take back to their countries given their experiences of questionable living conditions, humiliating body searches, insults, endless forms and interrogations in police stations and detention centres? After all this, we then just end up sending them back to countries which they are legitimately seeking to leave, often for political and economic as well as humanitarian reasons.
These readmission agreements are dangerous for asylum-seekers, for the dissemination of human rights throughout the world and for the international stature of the European Union.
If the Union wants to be taken seriously on the issue of respect for human rights, it must immediately stop these expulsions. It must legalise the situation of all these men and women who are deprived of all rights, including the right to live as a family and the right of free movement, and who are currently kept in a situation of official illegality.
Another flagrant attack on human rights concerns foreigners and citizenship. How can we expect third country nationals to integrate and their children to respect the law and to believe in the reality of democratic rights when they are not allowed to exercise these rights?
At a time when the Union is considering the definition of a Charter of Fundamental Rights, why are we creating second-class citizens? This really is a case of fundamental rights. How can we allow some people to be excluded? How can they believe in the reality of the Declaration of Human Rights? On human rights, the Union could take pride in being the first in history to define citizenship according to a principle of residence instead of establishing discrimination based on nationality."@en1
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