Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-12-13-Speech-1-166"
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"en.20101213.19.1-166"2
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"Mr President, I fear that as I get into the first paragraph of my speech, there will be only me, the PPE coordinator, and the Commissioner left in the Chamber. I admire you for your stamina, Commissioner. I should never take up my speaking time by doing this, but I could not help it. Thanks to the PPE Group for being here too at this time of night.
Commissioner, you and the Council did a great job in rescuing this proposal, which now benefits those who should never have been excluded from the original Long-Term Residence Directive. There was another opportunity to include them in 2008, and again unfortunately, through the failure to reach unanimity in the Council, this could not happen. So it is a very happy day today that a proposal taken on by my predecessor as coordinator in my group, Martine Roure, is now the subject of an agreement. I am very grateful to the Council, too. I pointed out in the previous debate that it was not present but, if it were present here today, I would thank the Council too, because during the Belgian Presidency, we were able to make good progress. I am very grateful for that.
The proposal will bring direct benefit to all beneficiaries of international protection who have been in the EU for more than five years but currently cannot become long-term residents. It will finally bring to an end their differential treatment compared to other third-country nationals and will give them greater certainty about their situation in the EU.
The main issue for the negotiations boiled down to the calculation of the time period of legal residence to reach the five years. We supported the Commission that the full duration of the procedure should be taken into account. However, this was strongly opposed by the Council. We were particularly concerned about this, because asylum procedures can take many years in some Member States. The compromise we have reached in the negotiations is that at least half of the asylum procedure will be taken into account and, if a procedure takes more than 18 months, the whole procedure will then be taken into account.
I hesitate to go on to the issue of correlation tables but I am duty bound to say something about them – I would rather not. I would nevertheless like to implore the institutions to reach a horizontal agreement on this issue. I would particularly urge the Council to recognise the importance of correlation tables for overseeing the implementation of legislation. We had a very difficult situation in which many of the dossiers considered of great importance by groups across this House could have been delayed because of this issue.
I am very happy also that the scope of the proposal includes both refugees and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection. It is vital to continue the trend towards aligning the standards of protection and the rights granted to both groups, as in the recasting of the Qualification Directive. The agreement also contains many safeguards against refoulement. Given that beneficiaries will now be allowed to move between Member States, it is important that the protection background of beneficiaries is never forgotten. Therefore, Member States will have to include a comment in the long-term residence permit and will be obliged to consult the Member State that granted protection in cases of possible expulsion. The proposal also takes into account the transfer of protection to another Member State under national arrangements. The long-term residence permit needs to be modified accordingly in order to safeguard against refoulement.
We have also ensured that the principle of family unity is upheld in the event of expulsion to another Member State, but it is also clear that it should not be automatic in cases where it may not be in the best interest of family members to go with the expelled person.
The agreement we have reached on this is a signal of the new cooperation which can exist between the three institutions in the area of asylum and legal migration aided by the new framework in the Lisbon Treaty. It shows that we can reach an agreement with Member States on a progressive piece of asylum-related legislation.
I again want to thank my shadow rapporteurs from across the groups, Ms Nedelcheva, Ms Wikström and other colleagues who helped make this what I would call a pleasurable trialogue – if that is not a contradiction in terms! I should like to thank all concerned for making this a reality."@en1
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