Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-11-17-Speech-3-032"
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"en.20041117.3.3-032"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I hope that it has not escaped your attention that the Council of the European Union has already approved one of the most controversial ideas contained in the draft Constitutional Treaty, namely qualified majority voting on immigration and asylum. What does this mean in practice? What it means is that by resorting to a qualified majority, the European Union will be able to force a country to accept asylum seekers, even if that country does not wish to do so. By resorting to a qualified majority, the European Union may decide, for example, that my country, Poland, is ethnically too homogenous, and that it should be sent some Asian or African asylum seekers, as there are already too many of these in other Member States. We would be unable to object to this.
Countries accept immigrants because of their proximity to various neighbouring countries, their former colonial policies or their labour market requirements, and each country must make its own decisions on whether it is prepared to grant asylum and, if so, to whom. It is also for each country to decide on who should be allowed to immigrate. Depriving Member States of the right of veto on such matters is a violation of sovereignty on an extremely important issue. The Constitutional Treaty will be rejected in the referendums, and yet the Council of the European Union is already forcing us to implement one of its most controversial ideas. There is no consensus on this."@en1
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