Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-27-Speech-3-014"
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"en.20060927.3.3-014"2
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Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we, in our group, have spent a great deal of time working out how we were going to approach today’s debate. The last time I took the floor of this House to speak in a debate on internal and security policy was when I spoke on the European arrest warrant and the plan for a European Public Prosecutor’s office, following which I had an enormous row with the President-in-Office of the Council. I have no desire to repeat that experience today, but I have to tell the President-in-Office and the Commissioner that I am not going to mince my words either.
Looking around the Chamber, I can see Mr Kirkhope, Mr Pirker, Mrs Klamt, Mr Watson, Mrs Lambert and Mrs Roure; like me, all of them were sitting here six years ago, when we all said exactly the same things. At the time, Mr Watson was the Committee chairman, and the Commissioner was a certain Mr Vitorino, who, by way of a follow-up to Tampere, presented us with what was called a scoreboard, which incorporated all the measures that you, Mr President-in-Office, and you, Commissioner, have described. The scoreboard owed its name to the fact that it explicitly specified timeframes, with measure A to be transposed by the Member States within period B, and the Commission’s report to reach the Council within period C, and so on.
Why, then, six years on, are we again sitting in this House discussing the same issues, the passerelle clause, for example? Six years ago, we were full of optimism when we discussed the provision in the Treaty of Nice to the effect that, from 1999 onwards, and entering into effect five years later – that is, in 2004 – and subject to a unanimous vote in Council, the policy areas that we are discussing today should become subject to the codecision procedure, yet, two years later, nothing has happened yet.
Mrs Klamt made an important point when she said that we must not, where integration or the processing of asylum applications are concerned, interfere with the powers of national, local and regional authorities, but nor can we tolerate a situation in which Community rules and regulations are indispensable yet not forthcoming. The streams of migrants reaching Europe’s southern coasts, which we are discussing today, will not be managed by restrictive measures alone; they call for an approach combining measures against organised crime, measures to give immigrants legal status and a coordinated policy of integration. That is not news to any of us. Why, then, are the Member States refusing to implement the proposals that Commissioner Frattini has just described? I think I know the answer to that question. The reason why they are refusing to do it is that these policy areas – the security of external borders, asylum, the law on citizenship, freedom of establishment and movement, police and justice policy – give them an opportunity to say to their citizens: ‘It is we – not anyone else – who hold the reins of power in this state.’ For fifteen years, the states have shrunk back from the abrogation of sovereignty that the transfer of such rights to the European Union represents, and I can understand why they do, for it involves, to a degree, the surrender of national power, but this surrender of a bit of power must be weighed against the prospect of migration, people-trafficking, uncontrolled immigration and the problems associated with them being allowed to drag on even longer. For ten years, the interior ministers of the European Union have failed to do anything about this, and this state of affairs must be brought to an end.
That is why the approach to which our question refers, and the answers we have been given today – particularly by Commissioner Frattini – are right, but it is time for action at long last."@en1
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