Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-11-Speech-3-011"
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"en.20040211.1.3-011"2
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"Mr President, Mr President-in-Office, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, if we examine the so-called progress made in implementing the area of freedom, security and justice, the picture is pretty devastating. I say 'so-called' progress, because it is primarily all about sealing off Europe from the rest of the world to an ever greater extent. The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, was recently very frank and clear about this policy, or rather this apology for a European policy, during his address to this House when he was awarded the Sakharov Prize. The UN Secretary-General did not greet us with polite and hackneyed words of thanks, no, he really read the riot act to Europe over its immigration policy. Let me remind you what he said. He said, and I quote, 'Migrants need Europe. But Europe also needs migrants'. And Annan added that welcoming and integrating migrants was not just a moral and legal obligation but part of the solution to Europe's economic problems. He fiercely criticised the EU's fortress Europe policy. He believed that a restrictive asylum and immigration policy drove many people into the hands of criminal gangs of people smugglers or even to their death, suffocating in trucks, or perishing in the undercarriage of aircraft, and Annan said that 'this silent human rights crisis shames our world'.
There are people who bear responsibility for this silent human rights crisis. It is not because of some anonymous restriction that hundreds of people die every year on the borders of the European Union. But what do we get from the Council and the Commission? Reports about common lists of safe countries of origin, about cooperation on deportation, about border protection agencies for stronger land and sea border controls, about the signing of readmission agreements, and so on. If all these proposals are given force of law, the only way to have any chance of applying for asylum in the European Union will be to jump from a plane over the EU with a parachute. At the same time, the EU and its Member States are actively responsible for giving rise to refugees from countries in the so-called Third World because of their failure to adequately combat poverty or by exporting arms to crisis regions.
Instead of taking countermeasures here, however, we are now to spend millions of euros on pilot projects on deportation in Europe. As a German Member of the European Parliament, I also know that up to now any halfway progressive proposal on EU asylum and immigration policy will be blocked by my country's government in the Council of Ministers. All the special German arrangements designed to scare off and harass asylum-seekers are to be preserved. To name just one example, there is the residence obligation for refugees, which is unique in Europe. Only in Germany are refugees penalised if they leave their
or rural district.
As long as there is no change in the fundamental direction of this policy, huge numbers of immigrants and refugees will continue to die at our borders. A few crocodile tears may occasionally be shed about the tragic fate of a few individuals, but nothing will change. We must finally have the courage to tell people the unvarnished truth and say that Europe needs immigration. Without immigration, by 2050 the population of the enlarged Union will have fallen from 450 million to just 400 million. Unless there is a change of course, Germany's population alone will have fallen by a quarter. The many human rights organisations in civil society are right in rejecting the EU's fortress Europe policy. Proposals for an EU asylum and immigration policy founded on a high level of respect for human rights are on the table, but they need to be accepted before we can have a genuine debate on progress here. What we need in Europe is a right of asylum in accordance with the Geneva Convention, including recognition of gender-specific and non-State persecution as grounds for granting refugee status, together with recognition of desertion and conscientious objection to military service as grounds. We need free access to European asylum rights and procedures. We need a judicial framework permitting legal immigration into the EU. We need a European legal area for campaigns to legalise the status of people without papers, and last but not least we also need a right to freedom of movement for all people living in the European Union."@en1
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"Landkreis"1
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