Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-03-13-Speech-2-065"
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"en.20010313.7.2-065"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, Europe has always been, and remains today, a paradoxical part of the world. At the same time as walls are being torn down within Europe, new walls are being built to prevent people from making their way to Europe at all. As the EU’s external walls rise higher, more and more people are falling into the hands of unscrupulous people – middlemen who profiteer from refugees’ anxiety, fear and desire to survive and give their families a better future.
We know that, in the last year alone, hundreds of people, including children clinging to the undersides of buses and lorries, have lost their lives – some of them off the Turkish coast, in Spanish waters and at Dover – in the hope of finding a better future in our part of the world. A few days ago, a young Kurdish man was shot by the police in a medium-sized town in Sweden. Exactly what happened, we do not know. What we do, however, know is that he had no valid identity papers and was to be deported.
Asylum policy is a common concern for the EU, but the disparate, and in some cases desperate, proposals received by the European Parliament threaten basic humanitarian values. It must go without saying that every refugee who wishes to stay within the EU must have his case carefully examined. European leaders must reflect upon why the smuggling of human beings into Europe is so dramatically on the increase.
The UN’s Secretary-General has been very clear in his criticism of the EU and of the EU’s obligation to protect asylum seekers’ rights. To impose visa requirements upon the citizens of approximately 130 countries in unworthy of European democracy. The basic rule must be that people have the right to travel freely into the EU. Mr Vitorino, the Commission should devote itself to shortening the list of countries upon which visa requirements are imposed. This is what Schengen cooperation should be about.
We in the ELDR Group regret that no overall asylum strategy has been presented and linked to labour market and immigration strategies. As matters now stand, there is no overview or comprehensive vision. Tighter measures, visa requirements and the threat of expulsion do not basically solve these problems.
I am a keen supporter of the EU and have wanted for a long time to see common rules within refugee and asylum policy, but we Liberals are not prepared to accept some kind of fenced-in Europe. The Iron Curtain must not be replaced by a more modern electronic variety.
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