Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-26-Speech-3-019"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20070926.2.3-019"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, what could better illustrate the need for a common European immigration policy than the case of the Tunisian fishermen? Everything about that tragic event – from the migrants on a rubber boat on the high seas, to the people smugglers who put them there and the authorities who jailed their rescuers – is testament to the failure of Europe’s approach to migration.
With every human tragedy, during a desperate do-nothing decade, Liberals and Democrats have asked one simple question: how many people must perish before governments see that lifting the drawbridge of Fortress Europe serves nobody’s interests? Managing migration is as much in our interests as in the interests of those seeking our shores or prepared to die trying. While populism has propelled a policy forged in the furnace of fear, let us face the facts.
Fact number one: over the next 20 years, Europe will lose 20 million workers – workers who staff our service industries and whose taxes fund services for our citizens.
Fact number two: national governments are deterring the people Europe needs if we are to compete – indeed, to survive – in a cut-throat global market. Eighty-five per cent of the best brains go to America and Australia, put off by our bureaucracy, our bloody-mindedness and our barriers to free movement.
Fact number three: of those migrants who reach Europe, only 3 in 20 are skilled; most are unskilled, desperate and dispossessed. Commissioner Frattini’s proposals address one half of this problem, building on Ms Hennis-Plasschaert’s ideas for a European Green Card to fill the skills gaps. But his ‘Blue Card’ plan has its own gaps: no mention, for example, of the workers that we need in the catering, healthcare or tourism sectors. It could address economic and demographic challenges if accompanied by free movement of workers from the new EU Member States, but it does little to counter the challenge of illegal migrants along our southern borders.
Let us make no mistake: the Commission’s cosy calculation that we can take the best and leave the rest will not work. Pushed by poverty, hunger, squalor and war, people will keep crossing the Mediterranean whether they fit our criteria or not. Why? Because our agricultural and fisheries policies are out-pricing their products and raiding their natural resources.
Of course we must patrol Europe’s borders. The Moreno Sánchez report is right to demand that Frontex be given the budget, the staff and the equipment needed to do its job – although suspending Gibraltar from Frontex, equivalent to leaving a hole in the fence, frankly beggars belief. Longer term, however, only a comprehensive EU policy that punishes the people smugglers, provides legal routes in and creates hope where there is despair can counter prevailing trends.
The truth is we have only one choice in dealing with developing countries: we take their goods or we take their people. If we want to let fewer in, then we must help more at home, as Ms Gruber’s report rightly says. That is why the Portuguese Presidency must redouble its efforts to bring down Europe’s farm tariffs and bring Doha to a successful conclusion and why the Commission must develop a generous agenda for Africa, linking money and market opening to respect for human rights and the rule of law, to give people hope of a better life at home.
Mr Lobo Antunes, Mr Frattini, hold your next Council meeting in the immigration hall on New York’s Ellis Island. Learn from our history of wandering westwards as you plan for the EU-Africa Summit in December. Migration will not go away: it is driven by the heady cocktail of despair and hope, it follows the law of supply and demand, but it has the capacity, if properly managed, to enrich and energise Europe."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples