Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-11-Speech-4-160"
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"en.20020411.8.4-160"2
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"Mr President, two months ago we held a debate in this Chamber on obstacles to traffic in the Channel Tunnel caused by the presence of numerous refugees on the French side trying to cross to Great Britain, apparently in order to seek asylum there.
But, as this first debate was lacking, to say the least, our Conference of Presidents decided, in its wisdom, to arrange a second debate today on the same subject. Unfortunately, to judge by the motion which is to be put to the vote, this debate will be just as unsatisfactory as the first.
Without repeating everything I said on the subject two months ago, especially on the vanity of a harmonised asylum policy supposed to resolve all these problems, I shall merely point out that the simple truth has yet to be stated anywhere. At present, the life of the French population in the region is being ruined, economic activity is being disrupted at the expense of our British neighbours, the railway companies are collapsing under the weight of unwarranted security costs and all because of total negligence on the part of the French Government, which lets illegal immigrants congregate in public, 90% of whom have no right to stay and should be sent home.
If we fail to react to this new form of immigration, the situation will soon get out of hand and become uncontrollable. To top it all, on Tuesday the House adopted a text which helps enormously in resolving the problem. I refer to the Council regulation establishing the criteria for determining the Member States responsible for examining asylum applications, which was the subject of the Marinho report. The state responsible is of course the state of initial entry. And Article 12, which we adopted, stipulates and I quote, that the ‘Member State which has knowingly tolerated the unlawful presence on its territory of a third-country national for more than two months shall be responsible for examining the asylum application’. So in this case, it is not Great Britain, it is in fact France which is entirely responsible and the least we can do is to say so clearly in our resolution."@en1
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