Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-20-Speech-4-049"
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"en.20010920.6.4-049"2
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"Madam President, I am sorry to have to begin by saying that this proposal is highly disappointing for several reasons, as is the debate that we have had so far, with rare exceptions. Some speakers have shown that they are not quite aware of the limits between humanitarianism and permissiveness or between necessary controls and unnecessary torture, but, above all, many have shown they do not understand that laws are not made of rubber – they are not as elastic as some would like, that is – but they have certain fixed points, certain cornerstones, beyond which one cannot go. The reason why I think this document should be rejected is that it is not balanced. It all too clearly favours the position of the asylum seeker, exaggerating the values I have just summarised, and places the Member States and competent bodies in a really difficult position to make a serious assessment of asylum seekers’ applications.
Another reason is that this seems to be a purely theoretical text, clearly divorced from the reality on which it is necessarily and inevitably based: the everyday reality of countries – particularly (but not only) my own, Italy – that have to grapple with the problem of uncontrolled immigration on a daily basis.
Another reason for rejecting this type of formulation also derives from the lack of uniformity in the assessments made by Member States in their procedures for granting refugee status. One can thus find cases of secondary migration; that is, refugees enter via the most permissive State and then transfer or move on internally to another, more restrictive State.
The proposal is not even clear on the distinction between the three different groups of asylum seekers either: those suffering political persecution as defined in the Geneva Convention, which has already been mentioned; refugees from war zones; and economic and occupational immigrants. It is unacceptable that three categories of asylum seekers that are so different from each other should be dealt with under the same rules. The Commission, furthermore, seems even to want to streamline the asylum acceptance procedure, extending it also to people whose cases do not come within the spirit of the Geneva Convention or the openings of the Tampere Council or even the updates on this issue to Title IV of the Treaty of Amsterdam.
What makes the Commission’s proposal and also the Parliamentary Committee’s draft legislation inadequate is that they do not correspond to reality. An ordinary piece of legislation is proposed for a severe emergency situation. Come and see what has been happening every day for the last ten years along the Italian coastline; come and see the conditions under which we are working to receive the people, not to put them in prison, and you will realise how inadequate these proposed guidelines are.
As I said at the beginning, here we must not confuse humanitarianism with strictness: the two things can go together. If you think that 300–400 refugees arrive in Italy every day, 1000 yesterday alone, you will realise that certain precautions are necessary or even inevitable. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, there is no need for long laments of pity such as I heard just now. There are no cases of inhuman treatment, nobody is held in temporary prisons; the refugees are received and fed, and then they are identified and classified to sort out the illegal immigrants among them, who are rejected, from the genuine ones, who are helped to stay, and also to try to identify underworld infiltrators.
There it is, then: strictness, yes; permissiveness, no. That is why our group will support all of Mr Schmitt’s amendments that aim to restore the original text of the report, that which lays down fairer rules, especially for the Member States that find themselves in this difficult situation. In short, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen: once they have got through the door into Italy, thanks to Schengen you will find all kinds, genuine ones and unwelcome ones, in your own countries."@en1
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