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"Mr President, Libya has a strategic position with regard to controlling migratory flows to Europe, in addition to significant energy resources and great potential as a neighbour and partner in the Maghreb. Commissioner, in these recommendations, we ask the Commission for detailed information on the budget lines used and planned in the cooperation with Libya. I hope that you will be able to let us have this information soon. Finally, I wish to point out that only recently did Parliament have the opportunity to consent to the Council’s mandate for the negotiations. That is unacceptable and cannot continue. Finally, I would like to express my thanks for the cooperation of all the shadow rapporteurs, who were essential for the broad consensus that has been achieved on potentially such a divisive topic. Some Member States have close relations with Libya, but it is important to ensure that such relations are duly anchored in the fundamental values and interests of the Union. Therefore, we support the development of relations with Libya through the establishment of a framework agreement covering various areas of cooperation with a view to stimulating a substantial political dialogue. We cannot forget, however, that Libya is governed by a dictatorial regime with a history of serious breaches of human rights and terrorist attacks and interference in other countries, though, in the last few years, there have been signs that it wants to do a U-turn. Consequently, the framework agreement with Libya can only have the consent of this Parliament if certain conditions are met. A condition is that Libya allows the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to operate in the country again with an extended mandate. Let me say it quite clearly: no UNHCR, no agreement. Libya must be persuaded to ratify the Geneva Convention on Refugees. As it is already a party to the African Refugee Convention, it is difficult to understand why its internal legal order does not recognise refugee status. Any re-admission agreement between the European Union and Libya has to exclude all those who claim to be asylum seekers, refugees or persons requiring international protection, and it must be applied completely in accordance with the principle of non-refoulement Critical situations, such as occurred with the 400 Eritreans who were on the verge of being expelled en masse from Libya last summer, must not happen again. The European Union must encourage Libya to adopt legal and social solutions that improve the inhuman living conditions of the approximately 2 million immigrants – about a quarter of the population – who are working in Libya. These immigrants deserve legal protection and cannot continue to be treated as slaves. The European Union has to invest in joint programmes to combat the growing traffic in people, which has devastating consequences, particularly for women and children. The European Union’s support for the International Organisation for Migration and all the organisations that help migrants in transit in Libya must be increased to improve the conditions of migrants interned in detention centres, which are starting to fill up again, in spite of suddenly being emptied in the middle of last year. The Union cannot abstain from persuading Libya to commit itself to a moratorium on the death penalty and it is essential that it demands that the Libyan authorities publish the identity of national and foreign citizens who are executed. The Union must insist that Libya ratifies the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Within the framework of cooperation, the Union must encourage reforms that modernise social, political and judicial structures, which open the country to the outside, which expose society to free information, which promote independence of the media and which invest in the institutional capacity building of corporate and labour organisations and other organisations that are representative of civil society. The Bouazizi revolution in Tunisia will certainly have repercussions in neighbouring Libya, and even the Gaddafi regime can understand that. We have to strengthen the support given to the health sector in Libya through the Action Plan for Benghazi by extending it to other medical centres and other public health requirements. We understand that the negotiations between the European Commission and Libya are at an advanced stage, though some difficulties have emerged with regard to trade and energy cooperation. From our point of view, it would be advantageous to set up an EU office in Tripoli soon to facilitate the negotiations and monitor the development of the situation in Libya."@en1
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