Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-26-Speech-4-135"
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"en.20001026.5.4-135"2
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"Mr President, allow me to start by offering my warmest congratulations to our fellow member Anna Karamanou on the quality of her work and to highlight her comment that the action plan should focus on providing protection to persecuted citizens, who are subject to constant human rights abuses, and not on how to limit and stop migration towards the Member States of the Union.
We all know that Albania faces acute problems, both as a country and as a society. The economic, social and political conditions which prevail in Albania force its citizens to seek in migration literally the only possible hope of survival for them and their families. The situation was exacerbated when action by political forces lavishly supported by the European Union resulted in the pyramid scandal in 1997 and robbed the people of their savings and, at the same time, shattered any confidence in the structures and organisation of the Albanian state. This situation resulted in a popular uprising which basically abolished the Albanian state, causing huge security, political and economic problems for the Albanian people. Massive quantities of arms passed into the hands of uncontrolled gangs which soon set up as mafia-type organised criminal gangs.
The whole situation was made worse by events in Kosovo and the NATO bombings, which exacerbated the problems in the region. To turn a blind eye to this situation and to try and erect walls around your paradise, allegedly to protect it from desperate neighbours is both inhumane and short-sighted.
Obviously, everyone wants to live in their mother country, provided of course that they can live a secure and dignified life there. On the other hand, however, there is no force which can stop a desperate person. What we need to do is abandon repressive measures and move in two directions: first, by helping Albania to revive its economy and restore its population there and, secondly, to legalise the Albanian immigrants illegally present in the Union, instead of treating them like second-class citizens and slave labour, and to put them to work where we need them. There are jobs in Greece, for example, which, if the Albanian immigrants leave, will remain undone, mainly in the agricultural sector.
Let us make use of bilateral agreements to define jobs, periods of residency, places of residency, pay, hours, working and national insurance conditions clearly and legally, so that immigrants can prove their strength and help to improve our economies and build friendship and cooperation between peoples, rather than nationalist, cold-war aspirations."@en1
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