Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-23-Speech-1-063"
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"en.20020923.5.1-063"2
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"Mr President, the asylum system is under pressure and in order to solve this problem, we must give priority to a common immigration policy. Mr Evans gets straight to the point in Paragraph 1 of his report.
The exclusion provisions, which are very topical in the light of the events of 11 September 2001, also fall within the concept of justice. Needless to say, these must be used in moderation and with care, but the admission of people who are denied access elsewhere is, in fact, precariously naïve. If we want to safeguard the security of our citizens, then we ought to apply these provisions, for this has been something of a weakness in recent years. The Netherlands seemed to go out of its way to offer shelter to people who were denied reception in other countries, and is now experiencing the effects of this. I therefore endorse restrictive and careful application, but I urge you to apply the necessary dose of reality. Unfortunately, the world is not a paradise full of well-meaning people.
Pressure on the asylum system is indeed considerable. Many asylum seekers are knocking on Europe’s doors. Experience has taught us that the majority of them do not fall within the definition of refugee as enshrined in the Treaty of Geneva. All manner of conceptions have come into being of what a ‘refugee’ actually is, and the Member States have developed secondary forms of protection. How difficult it is to establish any common ground is clearly obvious from the negotiations in the Council on the concept of refugee. It is therefore useful, based on the guidelines proposed by the Commission, to compare notes in terms of the Member States' legislation and policies in order to move forwards in joint partnership.
However, the solution proposed in Paragraph 1 of the Evans report strikes me as misconceived for different reasons.
It is, of course, a strange circular argument. The EU Member States, for reasons of their own, do not pursue an active immigration policy. The asylum system is getting overheated because many people who actually fall within the immigrant category still try to enter the EU via the asylum system. They are given the confusing label of ‘economic refugees’. Should we solve this problem by adopting an active immigration policy? That strikes me as a futile exercise. Surely, it will first have to be established that these people are not entitled to asylum.
It is thereafter possible to address the content of the notion of an immigration policy. Is this desirable for the European Union? I think that the views on this are very different in each Member State. This is also evident from the reactions to the Commission communication about an open coordination method for Community immigration policy. Accordingly, the Dutch Government explicitly does not view labour migration as a goal in itself. Research carried out by the Dutch Government has shown that this form of migration does not solve the Dutch problem of an ageing population or the bottlenecks within the labour market. I can imagine that this is probably different for other regions in the EU, but it is certainly not possible to adopt a straightforward, all-purpose policy here.
Moreover, it would not solve anything. Rather than the asylum system, it would then be the immigration system that would guarantee the best ticket into the European Union. Even if the pressure would be off the asylum system, it would be transferred just as quickly to the immigration system and trigger off the same abuses.
There is no easy solution to this problem. The best paragraph of the report is that in which a case is made for an integrated vision of asylum and migration issues, trade, development, the environment and agriculture, for as long as the gap between rich and poor is so immense, people will continue to try to build a better future for themselves and their children. This is a solution which will only bear fruit in the very long term, but it is the best one there is.
Meanwhile, we in the European Union will need to continue to consider the practical implementation of our asylum and immigration policy, taking as its guidelines the notions of compassion and justice. We will need to employ compassion in receiving refugees who have been driven out of their own countries. This involves receiving them under humane conditions, as the report stresses, in fact.
This should be accompanied by justice, which is not always easy, because it means justice not only in the form of access to the legal system, but also in the form of refusal and deportation."@en1
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