Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-26-Speech-3-040"
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"en.20070926.2.3-040"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, at last we are able together to discuss the subjects of illegal immigration and immigration that is referred to as legal: these are two sides of the same coin without which no country today can really claim to have a successful immigration policy. In truth, most have simply succeeded in creating electoral imbalances that only serve to aggravate the problems, which really do not need this if they are to be tackled effectively.
No Member State at the present time can claim that it wants to manage its immigration policy alone and the tragedy of this European Union is that many of its members are countries that historically, over two centuries or more, have known all about immigration, for they were the victims of it. There will be some political posturing today, but I think the time has now come to move up a notch. In an area that permits freedom of movement, such as ours, the decisions taken by one Member State will have an immediate effect on neighbouring countries. By the same token, as external borders will henceforth be shared by all the countries of the Union we cannot expect those Member States located in the south and east of the EU to have to face, alone and helpless, the massive influx of migrants of the kind we are now witnessing in Malta, the Canaries and Lampedusa, in the eastern parts of the Union and even in the north west.
With solidarity clearly called for here we need to apply the kind of political will that I feel the Member States are not sufficiently prepared to demonstrate. We cannot develop a proper European immigration policy if we do not put an end to the imbalance that exists in the current Treaties: the fight against illegal immigration has to be made part of a proper Community system and the present all-round paralysis affecting our policy on legal immigration can no longer be tolerated.
This is why I would again stress that for our policy on legal immigration and integration, as set by the mandate of the Intergovernmental Conference, we need to apply the principles of qualified majority voting and codecision with the European Parliament. This is the only way in which we can effectively and democratically meet one of the greatest challenges currently facing the European Union."@en1
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