Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-02-Speech-2-052"
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"en.20011002.3.2-052"2
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"Mr President, my group strongly supports the report by Mr Evans and welcomes its call for a high-quality common asylum policy. It is a curious feature of the construction of Europe that more opportunities for cross-border cooperation have been taken by commerce and criminals than by civil servants, and it is about time our national public administrations made a real effort to get out of their bunkers.
The situation at Sangatte, near Calais, has featured often on television screens in my home country in recent months. The UK can reflect on why so many people wish to come to our country and especially to my city, London. I like to think, at least in part, that this is a compliment to our free and diverse society, but we cannot just have an open door, and maybe the French authorities need to reflect on whether their system could be improved. There must be an equal balance of effort and sharing of responsibility to prevent both forum shopping by asylum seekers and 'pass the parcel' by Member States.
We also need consistency. It is illogical to be dismissive about people fleeing Iraq or Afghanistan, implying that they are undeserving scroungers, when by common agreement the regimes of those countries are deemed brutal and depressive, and even deserving of military attack. Even if not everyone from such countries can be judged refugees under the strict Geneva Convention criteria, but only as escaping mere misery, there is no call to demonise them. We must also be consistent about our attitude to women. If we think, as we do, that women's human rights in Afghanistan are grossly denied, we must take account of that in deciding asylum claims.
Finally, we must not weaken or lower the standards of our asylum systems under the guise of fighting terrorism, as the British Home Secretary is threatening to do. There are adequate powers to detain and deport if security is threatened. Speedy decisions are those based on high-quality procedures and efficiency such as that offered by the functioning immigration service computers which the UK lacks – not on removing appeal rights for all applicants."@en1
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