Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-03-Speech-1-081"
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"en.20060403.9.1-081"2
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".
Mr President, during the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs’ visits to the detention centres, a large number of very serious problems were in fact observed. However, what we saw in Malta was terrible. The conditions of detention are inhuman and degrading. Asylum seekers are held in cages without any opportunity to get out, and their most basic rights are overlooked. They do not have access to any legal or medical help. We met people who had been held sometimes for 18, 19 and even 20 months, without any contact with the outside world and in unbearable sanitary conditions.
Admittedly, we can take heart from the fact that the Maltese authorities have hidden nothing from us. This is a mark of respect towards the European Parliament and towards the Union itself. However, these conditions of detention still constitute a violation of human rights and of the European directive on the reception of refugees.
We therefore resolutely call on the Maltese Government to put an end as quickly as possible to its system of systematically detaining migrants. Asylum seekers are not criminals. They often come from hellish situations and they need to be treated with dignity. That being said, we must recognise that Malta is a very small country and that, due to its geographical location, the island is subject to particularly strong pressure. It is therefore the European Union’s duty to display a united front and to share the financial cost of managing Malta’s borders by doing what you said, Commissioner, and specifically calling on – as you said, Commissioner – existing programmes, such as ARGO and the Refugee Fund. A more comprehensive reform is necessary, however, because this is not just an issue of money.
That is why I am calling on the Commission to revise the Dublin II Regulation as quickly as possible and to draft proposals designed substantially to amend it. Ought we not to challenge the very principle behind it, namely that the Member State responsible for processing an asylum application is the first country in which the asylum seeker sets foot? This principle does in fact put an intolerable burden on countries located in the South and East of the Union and has the pernicious effect of jeopardising the access to asylum and undermining reception conditions.
Migrations are well and truly a phenomenon of the contemporary world. We will not shirk the responsibilities incumbent on us as wealthy nations when it comes to receiving victims of oppression or fighting against poverty, which – lest we forget – represents the fundamental cause of migrations."@en1
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