Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-11-Speech-2-036"
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"en.20030211.2.2-036"2
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"Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the directive presented by Commissioner Vitorino will be the foundational European draft law on immigration into Europe. In presenting it, he is taking a quite specifically systematic approach in generally opening up European labour markets to immigrants, whilst, by way of derogation, giving the Member States the option of taking their own absorption capacity into account and reducing the number of immigrants, right down to zero if need be. This is happening at a time when we have 15 million unemployed in Europe, and when, in my own country, the figure is nearing 5 million. Experts are unanimous in stating that this state of affairs will persist for years, so that we can say without further ado that Europe will not generally need more workers for many years to come.
They are needed in certain sectors, in certain lines of business, in certain regions and on a temporary basis, but, in principle and in general, there is no need for them. What this means is that, in the event of this directive becoming law, there will be increased pressure on Europe's labour markets, to the detriment of those who are already unemployed, and not least to the detriment of the third-country nationals who are in the European Union legally and who, in any case, are more likely to be unemployed than are EU citizens. You are opening up this possibility if a position cannot be filled within four weeks. Last year in Germany, the average vacancy, in terms of the period of time elapsing between the job being advertised and somebody taking it, was around seventy days. This shows that the four-week period is absurdly short and will, as I have said, put our unemployed under much more pressure.
The problematic thing about this system is that it involves a legal right, since, if an application is refused, the applicants are to be able to appeal to the national courts. We have already seen, to our horror, what happens when asylum-seekers make appeals of this sort, and so we do not want to repeat the experience with would-be immigrants. The report by the admirable Mrs Terrón i Cusí makes matters dramatically worse, as the majority on the committee went so far as to remove the regulatory element, the national right of control provided for by Commissioner Vitorino, so that all that is left is open access. Moreover, they have the idea that even illegal immigrants should also have the chance to apply for a work permit, which amounts to giving them a prize for getting in illegally, and one cannot sensibly support that either.
The Council has been attempting to digest this draft since as long ago as July 2001. I am quite certain that the Terrón i Cusí report will end up in the Council's great big waste paper basket, and that Commissioner Vitorino, too, will have to make substantial changes to his draft if he wants it to stand a chance of getting the necessary majority."@en1
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