Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-05-21-Speech-1-081-000"
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"en.20120521.15.1-081-000"2
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"Mr President, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms establishes the indivisible and universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity as cornerstones of the EU. Chapter III of the Charter talks about equality before the law and the banning of discrimination. The European treaties talk of European citizenship. The European Commission likes to be called the Guardian of the Treaties, but it should rather play a much more active role in trying to secure equal access for all European citizens to the fundamental principles of the European treaties and not create ‘second class’ citizens through its inactivity.
In July 2009, Canada imposed a unilateral visa requirement on citizens of the Czech Republic, without any reciprocal measures to date from the EU. The ostensible reason for imposing the visa requirement was the large number of asylum applicants from the Czech Republic. Of course, in view of the fact that other Member States later began ‘supplying’ Canada with large numbers of asylum seekers with no measures whatsoever from the Canadian side, I cannot overlook the Commission’s hesitant and unproductive approach to this matter so far. Is there perhaps some truth in the rumours of a deliberate, informal agreement between the Commissioner and her Canadian counterpart, aimed at avoiding other Member States suffering the same discrimination as my own country? Has the Commission perhaps simply tossed one group of EU citizens overboard? I do not know, and I hope this is not the case. Either way, I hope the Commission will finally heed all of the calls and endeavour to end the visa requirements for some European citizens travelling to Canada.
On 18 October 2011, Ms Parvanova, Mr Bodu and I sent Canadian Premier Harper a personal letter, warning him that a political link might be made between the unilateral imposition of the visa requirement and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). The letter still remains unanswered. Unless this situation is rapidly resolved, I would not be surprised if there were difficulties over the CETA ratification, and not only in the Czech Parliament."@en1
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