Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-09-15-Speech-2-038"
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"en.20090915.4.2-038"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I will immediately start by saying, without exaggeration, that for me, hospitality is a sacred value. Ultimately, it is solidarity between people which gives rise to the communities of a state, which are regulated by means of certain special obligations: rights and duties. Therefore as far as I am concerned, I am firmly opposed to anything that runs counter to this basic biblical principle. Clearly, it is the action of taking people in and also the ways in which we need to do this which combine to give rise to integration and all it entails.
What can we do? Where should we locate these desperate people who arrive in the Member States and, at the same time, how should we eliminate that ensuing friction which we sometimes see as resentment, anger and rage, leading to rather worrying forms of antagonism?
What should we do to ensure that safeguarding the right to asylum, a principle which has been cited in recent days too, does not, at the same time, leave the door open for fraudulent asylum seekers, which is the alibi certain people use: people who hide behind this universal right and who have nothing to do with the right to asylum, but everything to do with illegality and crime?
Do we really think, Mr Billström, that all this responsibility can be shouldered by individual states? Until now, Europe has very probably acted with some uncertainty, but it seems to me that it can no longer put off establishing a united, serious approach to immigration. It cannot speak as it has been doing, with many discordant voices, and cannot force the most exposed and vulnerable individual frontline states into isolation. It cannot do so without a common position reached collectively, one which so far, we have not had, but whose essential principles are continually defended.
It cannot, Mr President, fail to see its borders as a European issue instead of an issue for individual states. It cannot engage, as has already happened in this Chamber, in crude, theatrical performances in the argument over what the Italian Government or other governments are doing. For me, it is clearly unthinkable that the tragedies that have occurred off the coast of Lampedusa and in Ceuta and Melilla have nothing to do with Brussels, Berlin and Paris.
Tension between the individual states and Europe stems from this and is causing problems, and this is also increasing Europe’s democratic deficit, which is only set to get worse in the absence of a coordinated policy on immigration; it is heightening the impression that the self-interests of states prevail over the greater good. It is intensifying, Mr President, the frustrating perception that Brussels and Strasbourg all too often deal with obscure issues and not those which concern the public. Ultimately, it is undermining Europe’s political identity.
This is why I hope that the Swedish Presidency will begin to establish an agreement with the most vulnerable countries in order to think logically and bring about what has been lacking until now, namely a robust, balanced, sound and rigorous common policy on immigration."@en1
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