Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-09-13-Speech-2-026-000"
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"en.20110913.4.2-026-000"2
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"Madam President, this is the most important overhaul of the law which established Frontex in 2004, and Parliament greatly welcomes it.
Finally, we will also increase the democratic scrutiny of the agency, which will therefore be held increasingly accountable to Parliament. Madam President, that is already a mouthful, and I will stop my introduction at this point. I very much look forward to this debate and, hopefully, I will come back to some points later.
The establishment of the agency in 2004 coincided with the start of a massive flow of migration towards Europe via different routes. First via Spain, and, in particular, the Canary Islands; then via Italy, and the Italian island of Lampedusa, and Malta; later via Greece, and so on and so forth. So, in a way, this agency was asked to start running before it could walk. Therefore, all in all, our assessment of the first six years of experience of the agency is that it needs to be strengthened and made more effective because, despite all good intentions, it has not lived up to expectations so far.
This proposal to change the law was presented by the Commission, and already in the Commission proposal we had extremely good ideas which were certainly good steps forward. I hope that Parliament has improved on this proposal with the help of the Hungarian Presidency, in particular, and the Council of Ministers continues to build on these good points.
If I had to synthesise the contribution of Parliament, I would divide it into four points. I will say something about each.
The first point is that we tried to increase the visibility of the agency. We did this, in particular, by giving the border guards engaged in Frontex missions the name they really deserve. They should be called ‘European border guards’, and therefore we have given this new name to people who, fair enough, will be national border guards coming from national services, but will be participating in European missions under Frontex. For that reason, they should be called European border guards, rather than unintelligible phrases such as ‘Frontex joint support teams’ or, worse, ‘rapid border intervention teams’: ‘RABITS’!
Within one year, the Commission has promised to look at the feasibility of actually going that one step further along the path towards the establishment of European border guards proper.
The second area where we have made a contribution relates to strengthening the effectiveness of the agency; here, we focused on compulsory solidarity. This means that once a Member State decides – and commits itself – to pool a number of border guards or make some equipment, such as vessels, planes or helicopters, available to the agency, it will now be legally obliged to honour its promises. That was not previously the case, which explains to a large extent why the agency was not deemed to be effective in its missions, because when it turned to the Member States, they did not deliver.
The agency will also be able to purchase, lease, own or even co-own its own equipment from now on. Of course, we do not expect it to have an army of sorts by any means, but we want the agency to have basic equipment which will enable it to engage in missions, especially in emergencies. We will also give the agency the power to process personal data – under strict conditions – if this can help it in the fight against crime.
On human rights – which was a key point for this Parliament – we have agreed on important improvements to the Commission proposal. For instance, any Frontex mission where a violation of human rights occurs will now be suspended or terminated. We will also appoint a fundamental rights officer in the agency and a consultative forum on human rights, and we will monitor return operations in terms of human rights."@en1
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