Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-18-Speech-4-068"
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"en.19991118.5.4-068"2
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"Mr President, in our Group we view Eurodac as a drastic departure from the Dublin Convention. It is now being proposed that illegal immigrants as young as 14 years of age should also be covered by the arrangements in question, while the Dublin Convention is concerned only with asylum-seekers. In our view, Eurodac is not a prerequisite for enabling the Dublin Convention to function. It just gives the authorities increased opportunities for exercising control and, in any state based on the rule of law, very serious attention must necessarily be given to the balance between control measures and the rights of the individual. This is absolutely crucial. So let it be stated immediately that our Group is opposed to Eurodac. We hope that Parliament will again dig in its heels over this frontal assault on the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as on the legal rights of third-country nationals within the borders of the European Union.
Taking fingerprints from people, just because they are not citizens of a Member State, is tantamount to wholesale criminalisation of foreign nationals. To mix immigrants and asylum-seekers together in a fingerprint register is a departure from the basic idea of the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Asylum-seekers are entitled to ask for protection. It is not a criminal offence to request asylum. And the Dublin Convention in fact relates only to the first country of refuge.
If a fingerprint register is to be established, we do not under any circumstances want asylum-seekers to be mixed together with either legal or illegal immigrants, and we want to propose that, under such a system, fingerprints are taken only from people who have been sentenced for having committed criminal acts. It is proposed that 14 year-olds should have their fingerprints taken and stored in a register. We think that this is a departure from the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which requires that we protect children and which recommends 18 years as the age at which, generally, a child is deemed to become an adult. If a register is to be established, we want it to be possible to take fingerprints only from people of 18 years of age and over. Fingerprints are something which you take from criminals, and even criminals are entitled to protection. The rules on the erasure of records and the disclosure of information are far too vague in the Council’s proposal.
If a register is to be established, we propose that it should be possible for a person’s records to be erased as soon as that person has received a residence permit from a Member State. Let me repeat this once more: we are opposed to Eurodac. We consider this proposal to be a huge boulder in the wall around Fortress Europe, a wall we want to see broken down."@en1
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