Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-04-25-Speech-3-397"
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"en.20070425.39.3-397"2
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".
Mr President, the Commission strongly welcomes the excellent compromise reached by the European Parliament and the Council on the Rapid Border Intervention Teams Regulation.
Finally, I would like to stress once again that the Commission is very pleased with the good cooperation between the three institutions involved in reaching agreement on this extremely important piece of new Community legislation and would like to warmly thank the rapporteur, Mr Deprez, the shadow rapporteurs and the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs for their excellent contributions to achieving success on this file.
As you know, over the last few years the European Union has experienced an increasing need for providing operational assistance to the Member States which, due to their geographical location and the complexity of their external borders, have to shoulder the heaviest burdens in terms of border control. In response, the European Union created the Frontex Agency in 2004 as a measure for channelling the solidarity between Member States and the Community in terms of operational cooperation. Moreover, a new External Borders Fund will be used from next year for ensuring financial solidarity, by boosting the capacity of all Member States to deal with the challenges posed by their different external borders.
The establishment of a mechanism for the creation and deployment of Rapid Border Intervention Teams is a further measure of solidarity. It is an important step forward in the cooperation between Member States and the Community, by controlling the external borders of the European Union and performing checks on people at these borders.
The Rapid Border Intervention Teams will become a highly trained and specialised reserve of border guards, which will be deployed at short notice, by the Frontex Agency, to a Member State in need of such assistance. As something new and ground-breaking in this regard, the rapid teams will be enabled to carry out all necessary functions related to the checks on people at external borders, in the same way as checks are performed by the national border guards of the host Member State.
In this context, the Commission would like to make the following oral statement on the International Law of the Sea and international protection obligations.
Each Member State participating in operations coordinated by the Frontex Agency on the high seas remains fully bound by its individual obligation to respect the principle of non-refoulement as enshrined, in particular, in the Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees of 28 July 1951 and the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment vis-à-vis all people under its jurisdiction. When an interception or rescue operation is carried out in the territorial waters of a Member State, the Community
on asylum is applicable. This includes the Dublin Regulation. Consequently, in the absence of any other relevant criteria, the Member State on whose waters the interception or rescue operation is carried out, would be responsible for examining any asylum claims. These principles remain fully valid in cases of future deployments of Rapid Border Intervention Teams following the adoption of this regulation.
As the Commission underlined in its communication of 30 November 2006 on reinforcing the management of the southern external maritime borders, it is not clear under what circumstances a state may be obliged to assume responsibility for the examination of an asylum claim when the interception or rescue operation takes place on the high seas or in the territorial waters of a third country. Similarly, it is unclear under what circumstances the Member State hosting an operation coordinated by the Frontex Agency could be considered as ultimately responsible for compliance with this principle.
Evidently, the further development of an integrated system for managing the external maritime borders should be based on a clear common understanding of the Member States’ protection obligations. To this effect, the Commission suggested that Member States should address these issues collectively and pragmatically, either in the context of broader bilateral or regional agreements or through the development of practical guidelines in close cooperation with the International Maritime Organisation, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other relevant stakeholders.
In order to support this process, the Commission will soon publish a study on the Law of the Sea addressing these and other relevant issues. The publication of the study will be followed by an expert meeting with Member States to identify the practical follow-up, having regard to the limits of the Community’s responsibility in this area as well as the oral statement."@en1
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