Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-06-12-Speech-2-016-000"

PredicateValue (sorted: default)
rdf:type
dcterms:Date
dcterms:Is Part Of
lpv:document identification number
"en.20120612.4.2-016-000"2
lpv:hasSubsequent
lpv:speaker
lpv:translated text
"Mr President, a year ago, there was a lot of anxiety about Schengen. There was fear of unilateral actions on unclear grounds. There was uncertainty over how to act in cases of real persistent problems at borders and under what conditions borders could temporarily be reinstalled. The European Council asked the Commission to bring forward proposals to strengthen Schengen and to enable it to deal with future crises. It asked for a European-based mechanism. In September last year, the Commission brought forward such a proposal. It brought forward a proposal on a European-based evaluation to enable the Commission, together with Member State experts and their agencies, to detect problems early at our borders in order to be able to identify what could be done, to propose remedies, to activate all our tools and to present an action plan that would be compulsory and that the Commission would monitor. This would replace the peer-to-peer review that we have today and which has proven to be quite useless. The legal basis for this would be Article 77, because only then would there be a robust evaluation with binding impact and an increase in political legitimacy, as the European Parliament would be a colegislator. This is not just a legal proposal; it is also a political ambition. The other proposal was on the Schengen border code, which is also a European mechanism for the reintroduction of borders as a last resort and is linked to the evaluation mechanism. Such a situation might arise when everything else has been tried. Member States are masters of their borders, but Schengen is a joint European achievement and very much cherished by our citizens. New borders will affect citizens, business, trade, jobs and growth, and that is why any decision to reinstall borders cannot be taken unilaterally. It must be a European decision. On the Commission side, there is clear disappointment at the decision by the Council. It adds very little to current rules; we are creating a system where there is no real enforcement decision that can be followed up at EU level and it does not equip us to fight abuse or populist movements arising from domestic pressure. I appreciate the European Parliament’s support for this and am convinced that the last has not been said on this matter. We also took note of the vote yesterday in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE). The Commission will work on this file together with Parliament, and I count on Parliament’s support to work towards a stronger Schengen to the benefit of our citizens, where we defend security but also freedom of movement for citizens, business, jobs and growth so that we have clear and transparent European rules for evaluation and decision making."@en1
lpv:unclassifiedMetadata
lpv:videoURI

Named graphs describing this resource:

1http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/English.ttl.gz
2http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/rdf/Events_and_structure.ttl.gz

The resource appears as object in 2 triples

Context graph