Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-04-08-Speech-2-271"
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"en.20030408.7.2-271"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, once again I should like to thank Mrs Cerdeira for her report and say very sincerely that I agree with several of the comments that have been made during the course of the debate about the minimal nature of the agreement that we have reached.
I can tell you that after three years of negotiations I am convinced that it was impossible to go beyond the level that was reached thanks to the commitment of the Greek Presidency, as Mrs Karamanou has stressed. I am also sure, however, that this is not the last time that we will discuss family reunification. It is a process that is going to evolve and I hope that two years after the directive has been incorporated into national law we will be able to assess the added value of the minimal standards that we are about to adopt and see what further avenues might be explored on family reunification then. I do in fact think that it is a fundamental right, that it is key to the success of our integration policy and that, as the Member States develop their own integration policies, family reunification will become an increasingly important lever to help to integrate migrant workers successfully into the host European societies.
I do not imagine that it will be possible to depart from the essential shape of the political agreement that the Council has adopted. That is why I would ask Parliament to show understanding for the fact that the Commission itself is not going to move away from this political agreement either. I should like to add, however, that this political agreement must not be any weaker than what is already on the table. That is why, for example, although I agreed in the past not to include subsidiary protection and beneficiaries of subsidiary protection in this proposal – at the request, incidentally, of the European Parliament amongst others – I do not think that it is acceptable to exclude refugees from this directive. You see, we have to recognise that refugees have to have a right to family reunification, that this right needs to be included somewhere in a legal standard and that this instrument is the appropriate place to enshrine such a right to family reunification.
Finally, as Mrs Hazan said, this is the first instrument on legal immigration. I think that it sends out a strong political message: a European Union policy on immigration cannot only be a repressive policy, it also has to be a policy of legal immigration. I hope that this first instrument – as minimalist as it is – will form a foundation on which we can build the political will to adopt the Commission's other legislative initiatives on legal immigration, because if you are going to have an immigration policy that is not only credible and consistent, but also respectful of our common values, you need to have a complete set of legal instruments."@en1
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