Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-11-12-Speech-1-109"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20071112.19.1-109"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would also like to thank Commissioner Frattini for his detailed report this afternoon. In my opinion, Directive 2004/38/EC is a valid point of reference, guaranteeing full affirmation of the right of movement of EU citizens, avoiding any form of discrimination and establishing the principle of full integration.
This directive is essentially concerned with protecting the rights of someone residing in a Member State, as well as the rights of citizens of that Member State, in keeping with the principle of reciprocity. It offers maximum protection for people working, studying and wanting to become integrated, but comes down hard on those people who break the rules. It is on this latter point that Parliament must have a real discussion.
Not only are there rights, there are also duties and rules which must be respected. We cannot continue to ignore the fact that there is a percentage – no doubt an absolute minority, but this percentage does exist – of people who travel to other Member States and who have no intention of reporting their presence to the host Member States, simply because they do not want to be officially recognised, because they have no intention of abiding by the laws and working legally.
We need to address properly the problem of who moves to and who enters a Member State, intent on remaining on the fringes of society. No doubt the tools can be improved, but some of them are already available to the Member States under Directive 2004/38/EC. This is why first we must call for the prompt, full, thorough and concrete application of the Directive in each Member State.
Perhaps it might also be worth refining the Directive, not only imposing an obligation on visitors to declare their presence in the territory of the host Member State on certain terms, but an obligation on the Member State to impose sanctions on anyone who does not abide by the rules. In Italy for example, the decree implementing the directive sets forth certain terms and conditions, but it does not provide any sanctions, so the law is in fact completely ineffectual.
Above all, we need to make sure that immigrants are escorted back to their own country, obviously in cases where there are genuine reasons for doing so. However, I should point out that anyone who commits a crime, anyone who violates human rights, because this is also important, who exploits children, who exploits women or who represents a threat to public safety, must be removed and returned in no uncertain terms to the authorities in his or her country of origin. We also need laws for people who do not work, for people who have a hand-to-mouth existence and who can thus represent an excessive burden for the community of the host Member State.
I would like to finish by mentioning the Roma children and making the case for Italy. There are around 50,000 children, or rather at least 50,000 exploited children in Italy. They are of Roma origin, they are forced to beg, they are not vaccinated, they do not go to school and they live in absolutely deplorable sanitary conditions. I would like to remind everyone that around a week before Mrs Reggiani was killed in Rome, in the same shanty town as the one in which Mrs Reggiani’s killer lived, a two-month-old Roma child died of cold. This was in Rome, one of Europe’s foremost capital cities.
Therefore, I will finish by asking, is this truly integration? Is this respect for human rights? We have a duty to ask serious questions without hypocrisy and we have a duty to say that everyone is equal before the law."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples