Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-27-Speech-2-015"
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"en.20050927.4.2-015"2
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".
Mr President, I agree with virtually everything the previous speaker said, although the voting intentions of my political group have been misinterpreted, which I will come to in a moment.
I should like to thank the rapporteur, who has had an extremely difficult task in trying to improve the deeply flawed document received from the Council, which some of us see as an affront to human rights and to those seeking sanctuary. I find it very depressing that this 'fragile compromise', as it was described, was the best anyone could come up with. It simply encapsulates a lot of what Member States are already doing.
Reference has already been made to the concept of super-safe third countries and indeed safe third countries. My political group has a major problem with this. At the moment the British Government, for example, is prepared to send asylum seekers back to Iraq, Congo, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan. Some of us are dealing at the moment with the case in which not only is someone being returned to Iran, but his British Christian wife is going with him, with the government paying her fare. That is all very generous.
There are many in this House who do not believe any of those countries to be safe. Therefore the minimum that we want, if we are to accept this flawed concept of safe third countries, is a unified list decided under codecision with Parliament, which would be a step towards a common asylum policy.
We are deeply concerned at the implications for non-refoulement, particularly as we are also witnessing an attack on Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which deals with the issue of not returning people to a situation in which they might face torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. We welcome the amendment from the rapporteur and Mrs Roure that keeps open the possibility of testing the human rights dimension of this in the courts.
The committee's amendments have strengthened the text quite considerably. There is much greater emphasis, for example, on the rights of children and procedures for the vulnerable. There is much greater clarity as regards the need for adequate legal representation and an individual interview, which assumes even greater importance in the context of the single asylum procedure currently under consideration.
We also welcome the commitment to adequate interpretation. Everyone in this House knows how important skilled interpreters are. However, our lives are not dependent on them, whereas quality of interpretation can be absolutely crucial to an asylum seeker's future.
The issue of detention is an extremely vexed subject, to put it mildly. However, arbitrary detention with no possibility of appeal is totally unacceptable. We believe, therefore, that the committee has done a good job in tightening the legal requirements surrounding this and making it clear that detention is not imprisonment when you have been accused of no crime."@en1
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