Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-23-Speech-1-059"
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"en.20020923.5.1-059"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, negotiations on a common European asylum policy are proving to be tough and difficult. It often appears as if we are stuck on a road going nowhere. However tendentious this House's debates on the subject may have been, MEPs are not at fault in this. Although we have done prompt work in this area, we have a right to be consulted and nothing more.
As we are all aware, the Council has to reach a decision unanimously. This does of course mean that the Commission deserves all praise for trying to find new ways ahead, but I tell you that the open coordination method is not a solution – at any rate, not in Parliament's eyes. Unlike the rapporteur, the PPE group is firmly opposed to the introduction of an open coordination method in the area of asylum policy.
We see an open coordination method as leading to the Community decision-making procedure being bypassed and to Parliament being left on the sidelines. That would be the first step towards returning
asylum policy to the intergovernmental level and towards asylum policy ceasing to be one of the European Community's responsibilities.
Quite apart from the fact that a majority in the Convention are convinced that asylum should continue to be governed by Community rules, we cannot and must not allow Parliament, which is the only European institution with any democratic legitimacy, to be shut out from the process of shaping a common asylum policy. That being the case, we in the PPE Group reject Mr Evans’s report.
Our group has other reasons for rejecting the report. The first is the call for a restrictive interpretation of the exclusion clauses of the Geneva Convention on Refugees. The second is the demand that it be ensured that applications are first examined by reference to the inclusion clauses of the Geneva Convention on Refugees, before any grounds for exclusion are taken into consideration – a deviation from current legal practice – and that accelerated procedures or admission procedures should not be used in such cases as a matter of routine. Thirdly, we reject the demand that routine checking for grounds for exclusion be prevented in the course of the processing of asylum applications.
Nor will we in any way approve any attempt at nullifying Eurodac. We simply cannot have a situation in which biometric data – even fingerprints – taken from asylum seekers cannot be used for the purpose of investigating criminal offences. Security is of great value to the citizens of the European Union, just as it is to those who come here seeking protection and safety.
To sum up, the PPE Group can approve Mr Evans’s report only if a plenary vote adopts extensive changes which we, the European People's Party, have submitted in the form of amendments. Parliament must, though, firmly reject the open coordination method."@en1
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