Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-20-Speech-3-406"
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"en.20070620.30.3-406"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner Frattini, I wish to begin by thanking Mr Pirker for a constructive report. Following the discussions in the committee, the feeling is that we can support it.
Asylum policy is an area that EU citizens expect us to deal with together, because the problem concerned is a cross-border one. Here in plenary and in the committee we have often discussed the current situation in the Mediterranean, which we MEPs have still not succeeded in resolving. It is scandalous that people are still dying there every day. There are both immigrants and asylum seekers in the group I come from.
Since the start of the war in Iraq, my own country of Sweden has welcomed more refugees – approximately 10 000 – than any other country in the whole of the EU, and we are not even one of the larger EU countries. As Mr Pirker said, we must share the burden. I therefore believe that we cannot just make declarations and pledges that we do not fulfil. Instead, we must, as is proposed in the report, not only speed up our procedures for handling cases and make a considerable investment in exchanging and gathering information but also have the courage to say that we believe in an open Europe in the future. Human trafficking must be brought to an end. There must be an end to the trafficking of women and children led into prostitution and the sex industry. It must no longer be possible to provide the EU with cheap labour whenever employers need it, only then to send the workers back home when the jobs concerned have been completed. These are difficult issues, but we have an obligation to solve the problems if we are serious about introducing a common asylum procedure in 2010.
For me - coming as I do from Sweden, which has always been generous in welcoming refugees - it is still absolutely crucial for us to talk in terms of an inventory of third countries, but every refugee’s case must still always be examined individually. Otherwise, many refugees will continue to be discriminated against because they belong to a minority or because of their gender, background or sexual orientation or because they are fleeing a war where they perhaps belonged to the group that is not going to win.
I hope that this report means that we are now taking the next step and that all the EU countries and we MEPs will together assume responsibility not only for solving these urgent problems but also for finding long-term solutions."@en1
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