Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-09-06-Speech-3-014"
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"en.20000906.1.3-014"2
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"Mr President, I would like to begin by thanking Mrs Klamt, who was the original rapporteur designated by the committee which I have the honour to chair to look at this issue. Mrs Klamt did a very considerable amount of work on the proposal for a Council directive on the right to family reunification. She deserves the credit for the work that has been done. I wish to congratulate her on that.
I have inherited this particular cornucopia as chairman of the committee because Mrs Klamt felt at the end of the votes at committee stage that she could no longer support the text as it stood and therefore I am presenting it to the House today.
I would like to commend the European Commission on what is an extremely well argued and well presented report, drawn up in record time considering the relative lack of resources of the departments concerned and the demands laid down at the European Council in Tampere last year. The Commission has come forward with an excellent draft directive which will permit third-country nationals legally resident in a Member State of the Union to reside in another Member State as is required if a true area of freedom, security and justice is to be established.
The Commission has said, quite rightly in my view, that the goal of zero immigration mentioned in past Community discussion was never realistic and sought instead to put forward realistic proposals for the protection of the rights of third-country nationals in accordance with the many international treaties that have been signed by Member States, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the international covenants of 1966 on civil and political rights and on economic and social rights.
Very clearly, the importance of legal immigration is recognised. The importance of the family as a unit is also recognised and the importance of making a success of the integration of third-country nationals residing lawfully in EU Member States is the whole basis of these proposals.
We have in my committee considered a number of contentious areas, not least the question of the right to bring in ascending relatives. The Commission proposal quite clearly recognises the difference of legal treatment between descending and ascending relatives. It is evident that, in the context of the international legal framework, mention must be made of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This convention requires states to ensure that the child is not separated from the parents. There is no similar convention dealing with ascending relatives, but it is clearly the case that if we wish to live up to our humanitarian ideals we must provide the opportunity for third-country nationals to bring dependent relatives in the ascending line into their family units. This has been a matter of some debate within the committee. I am pleased to see that a number of amendments to the final report have been put forward; in particular Amendments Nos 18 to 23, which propose a compromise on this matter.
May I briefly introduce some of the amendments that the committee's report puts forward. Amendment No 3 looks at the need for data and recognises that in order to have an effective evaluation of the situation in the Member States, the Commission will need more information from the Member States. Amendment No 5 deals with relatives from the ascending line. This has now been overtaken in a sense by the compromise Amendments Nos 18 to 23. Amendment No 6 recognises the very real problems that the administrations of the Member States currently have with the workload created by the demands of family reunification.
Amendment No 9 allows each Member State to introduce more favourable provisions than those set down in the directives, and insists that these new rules will not lower current standards of protection. Amendment No 11 deals with the grounds on which a Member State may deny the right of entry to a relative, namely on grounds of public policy, domestic security and public health. Our amendment seeks to insist that any Member State wishing to refuse entry on those grounds provides very clear justification.
I do not wish to comment on all of the 66 amendments put forward to my report, but I would say that this is a very complicated area. Parliament had relatively little time to look at it and inevitably not all of the compromises which were necessary to reach a favourable outcome were achieved in committee. I would therefore urge Members to look carefully at the amendments that have been tabled in plenary to reach the compromises which will allow us to go forward in an effective and humanitarian way."@en1
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