Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-13-Speech-2-040"
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"en.20010313.6.2-040"2
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".
Mr President, I concur with what Commissioner Vitorino stated a moment ago, namely that, essentially, the EU Member States have failed to set up a European asylum policy. In Tampere in 1999, the government leaders may have been brimming with good intentions, but they never got beyond drawing up a wish list. The European Commission’s scoreboard, dating back to 2000, lists the necessary measures in a more readily understood format. However, it already appears that the Council meeting of Ministers for Justice will fall short of the goals which have been set. This also applies to the setting up of a reception scheme for displaced persons. The present draft directive is the third proposal which is being presented to the European Parliament, no less than four years after the first one in 1997. The European Parliament endorsed the first two, but the Council of Ministers is struggling to reach a decision on these. It has never been exactly clear which Member States thwarted the proposals, as everything is done behind closed doors. The Council of Ministers has remained silent, and that is once again European asylum policy at its worst.
This attitude is reprehensible, for we would do well to remind ourselves of what is actually at issue. This proposal provides for situations such as those which occurred a few years ago in Bosnia and later on in Kosovo, situations in which the mass influx of displaced persons has to be absorbed by the European Union, situations in which people are being driven away from house and home, where villages are burned to the ground and where people are at their wit’s end. This affects hundreds of thousands of people at the same time. Of course, they deserve a dignified reception. Of course, the European Member States should share out the responsibility fairly and squarely by making sound agreements. This has not happened to a satisfactory level in the past. And we can already foresee that, when a similar tragedy soon strikes Macedonia or maybe Algeria, the European Union will, once again, not be prepared.
Mr President, the European Commission has done a good job. The present proposal outshines the previous two proposals. The sharing of responsibility among the Member States has now been included in the scheme and is now inextricably linked to it. That aspect, therefore, will enter into effect at the same time as the rest of the scheme. And there are many other aspects which have been arranged far more efficiently than in the previous proposals but which I will not elaborate upon at this stage. That is the good news.
I would now like to mention a few aspects where there is room for improvement. The first thing that springs to mind is the link with the Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees, particularly the key principle of it, namely the
principle, the principle that refugees cannot simply be returned home. This must be spelled out more clearly in the proposal. The Council of Ministers must be tied down to deadlines when it takes decisions on the implementation of the temporary protection of displaced persons, and the European Parliament – this, too, is an old complaint, Mr President – must be more involved in the decision-making process.
The proposal falls short in one area: that of the sharing of responsibility – we used to talk about the sharing of the burden, this is now referred to as the sharing of responsibility – between the Member States. What is at issue here is which Member States make what effort with regard to the reception of the large numbers of displaced persons. In the case of Bosnia and Kosovo, countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and Austria received large numbers of displaced persons, whilst other Member States did too little. The Commission now proposes, first of all, to share the financial burden on the basis of the Refugee Fund. Mr President, it is my conviction as your rapporteur that this aspect really needs to be reinforced. This is first of all about implementing the EC Treaty which expressly stipulates that the Council must help strike a balance between the efforts of the Member States in this field. The word ‘balance’ encompasses more than the word ‘solidarity’ which is in the proposal at present. More than anything, we need to distribute the displaced persons across the Member States proportionately: hence Amendments Nos 4 and 11. I naturally hope that these will be adopted by this House. Also, the provision must be deleted whereby Member States can opt out altogether from receiving displaced persons. Quite the reverse: every Member State must be able to justify its supply of reception facilities very well, and that is set down in Amendments Nos 31 and 32.
Mr President, all things considered, we have a reasonable proposal before us which this House will hopefully be able to accept."@en1
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"non- refoulement"1
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