Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-05-Speech-2-099"
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"en.20020205.5.2-099"2
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".
We voted against the Ludford report, which supports the Commission’s proposal to establish a single status for third-country nationals, who have been legally residing in one of the EU countries for more than five years. In our view, this idea is fundamentally flawed, as it will make the existing status uniform and more rigid, and deprive each Member State of any margin for manoeuvre in an area – namely, the presence of long-term foreign residents on its territory – which must, first and foremost, remain a matter for the national sovereignties.
Secondly, we cannot give this proposal a legal basis without distorting the meaning of Article 63(3) and (4) of the Treaty establishing the European Community, which only provides for ‘measures’ regarding residence and not a ‘status’ in the full meaning of the word. It is true, however, that if the Treaty of Amsterdam had not been ratified, the weaknesses that the Commission is now exploiting would not exist.
Lastly, we are seeing once again that, in practice, the Commission is using the concept of status as a lever to grant long-term resident third-country nationals (including refugees as well, for good measure) rights that are virtually equal to those of national citizens. Article 12 of the proposal for a directive lists the areas where equal treatment would be
in other words, almost all of them, except the right to vote.
This systematic equality is unjustified; although foreigners clearly have a right to receive benefits in return for having paid social security contributions, each nation must have the freedom of choice to decide whether to grant benefits that are funded from tax contributions. We wonder whether this desperate attempt to achieve equal treatment for all is one of the profound causes of the disaffection towards citizenship that is currently evident in our countries."@en1
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