Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-27-Speech-2-022"
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"en.20050927.4.2-022"2
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"Mr President, Mr Vice-President of the Commission, ladies and gentlemen, as long as we are among the most secure regions of the world, people who suffer persecution in their own countries will come to us, and it goes without saying that we should try to help them. It is an humanitarian obligation incumbent on us not only as individual states, but also as a European Union, and the fact that that Union’s internal borders are open makes it important that we at least lay down a minimum standard for asylum procedures, with it made clear not only to asylum-seekers but also to the host countries what prior conditions apply, what form the procedures take, and how long they should take.
It is also a matter of humanitarian obligation that procedures should be transparent and quick, and that they should treat people with dignity, and this is an obligation that the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats takes very seriously, as is evident from the amendments tabled by our shadow rapporteur Mr Coelho – which the Committee accepted – in contrast to the approach taken by the rapporteur, Mr Kreissl-Dörfler, which does nothing to help us meet our humanitarian obligations. The fact is that what matters is not that we should accept as many people as possible, but that we should offer a safe haven to those who are persecuted in their own country and for whom Europe is their only possible place of refuge. At the same time, we must be clear in our own minds about the evident fact that the right of asylum is also misused, and so, in order to make room for people who really are persecuted, we have to deter manifestly unfounded applications. Using a list of safe third countries helps to do this.
Practice in Germany has shown this to be a sensible and workable arrangement, although it must be noted that inclusion in the list of safe third countries is conditional upon acceptance and implementation of both the Geneva Convention on Refugees and the European Convention on Human Rights – a high standard that we have set for ourselves.
It is this concept of safe third countries and safe countries of origin that the rapporteur rejects, with the consequence that, for example, neither Canada nor Norway nor Switzerland are regarded as safe countries for asylum-seekers. I have to tell him that they should be included in any procedure, and, while our Green and Socialist Members reject Bulgaria and Romania as safe states, they nonetheless want them to accede to the EU in a few months’ time. That is inherently contradictory. Moreover, in the original version of his report, Mr Kreissl-Dörfler went as far as to demand that criminals for whom an arrest warrant had been issued should be granted asylum before they were arrested. He also, citing cultural sensitivities, rejected the fingerprinting of asylum-seekers, even though that is often the only way to positively identify those who have arrived without papers, and that would make it virtually impossible to determine whether a person had applied for asylum in more than one Member State.
To Mr Kreissl-Dörfler I have to say that the adoption of his report in its present form would, in my view, be a disservice to many serious applicants for asylum."@en1
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