Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-20-Speech-4-030"
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"en.20010920.4.4-030"2
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"Mr President, may I thank Mr Watson on behalf of our committee for bringing this report to plenary. I listened carefully to what Mr Watson and Mr Schmitt just said. Mr Schmitt spoke a lot about unjustified applications and, of course, we need to look at all applications properly. Mr Schmitt said, and I wholeheartedly agree with him, that Member States have to do more to address the root causes that are forcing people to migrate across Europe and across the world, but it is not easy to address the root causes in the countries from where many asylum seekers come. The highest number of asylum seekers in Europe come from Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka and at the moment, as we know only too well, it will not be easy to address quickly the situation in Afghanistan: we watch that situation with some terror.
Nearer to home, we are affected, at the moment by the lack of a common working asylum system for Europe and the separate issue of a common immigration policy, which will come later. But we see on our television screens, certainly in Britain and France nightly, and colleagues in Spain have a similar problem, the way that the lack of a proper system manifests itself in tragedy. Asylum seekers are desperate people escaping in many cases war, violence and torture. Yes, Mr Schmitt, some of them are just escaping poverty, but we should not knock them for that. We need to give them respect and make certain that they are treated fairly.
This report calls for high standards for reception of asylum seekers, to recognise that they are not criminals while their cases are being heard. People escaping from the worst situations do not need to be detained in prisons, detention centres and I agree with Mr Watson on this. Those escaping from war and torture do not need to be welcomed by barbed wire and armed guards. They need to have their cases heard properly, they need a fair system and they need a system that puts the individual at the heart of the process. This report goes some way towards that, but it is part of a much wider picture working towards a common European asylum system with a separate immigration system alongside it. I hope that we can get this through as amended and continue the vast amount of work still to be done in this area."@en1
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