Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-14-Speech-3-194"
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"en.20040114.4.3-194"2
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"Mr President, I should like to offer the rapporteur my sincere thanks. It is customary practice to do this anyway, but I think that it is particularly fitting in this case.
The reason is that the rapporteur has really tried to concern himself in particular with the position of migrants in the labour market. I believe that he has succeeded in this, but unfortunately not entirely, because others have presented all kinds of distracting amendments. I should like to mention Amendment No 13 in particular, which more or less states that anyone who has paid even a small amount of tax anywhere should have an automatic right to a residence permit. I think that it is impossible to speak about any part of this topic without taking as one’s point of departure that Europe, with 450 million inhabitants, cannot be a reception centre for ten times as many people living outside Europe. That is not possible, and if we refuse to accept this fact, things become very difficult. The rapporteur has of course accepted it, and hence speaks about ‘managing migration’. That automatically implies doing something about it, keeping the situation in hand. I think that that is very good, in itself. If people keep to it, this is a splendid report. I have a fundamental difference of opinion, therefore, with those behind me who have said that it is nothing but nonsense and flights of fancy. That is not true.
The dangerous flights of fancy are to be found on the other side of this House, where people are seeking to grant rights that cannot be fulfilled. If we cannot provide employment, there is no sense in granting rights. This would make us like the rich people of old who had a beautiful view from their windows and cared nothing that the poor people had to live in slums, because that is where they went, after all. Anyone who wants that should say so. They must also come out and say that we should indeed take in everyone and only then look at the consequences. That is the problem that we have here in the background.
The rapporteur has shown that he is aware of that. He has also shown that he is trying to prevent that. Unfortunately, however, there are still some people in his own party – and in some other parties – who copy those aristocrats of old who believed that everyone should simply be given rights but who were not themselves prepared to accept the logical consequences of this and, instead, left others to deal with them. That exacerbates the misery, as we can see in the United States, and we want to avoid that. There is absolutely no need for any talk of this.
Finally, on the subject of European citizenship, the rules on this are laid down in the Treaty, and it is indeed strange to include this subject here in a couple of words. That would need a Treaty amendment. We have, however, declared ourselves in agreement with the Convention, which does not provide for this. It would be very strange, then, if we were to simply go and lay down rules on the subject here in this report."@en1
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