Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-12-13-Speech-1-088"

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"Mr President, we are supposed to speak about visas; we are supposed to speak about visas in terms of statistics and what the European Union has done. In this Chamber, there is widespread satisfaction. I would like all of you who have spoken with such satisfaction today to try and imagine having to stand for 10 or more hours in a queue, bear humiliation and discomfort and stand in the rain in terrible conditions in order to get a visa. People have to stand and they have to pay one third of their salary to get a visa. They also have to hear that diplomats in their country do not need visas, and finally, after trying to get a visa several times, because they need one, they get a single-entry visa, despite wanting a Schengen visa, but they did at least get a visa for the country in question. The visa procedure should weigh heavily on our conscience. It is nothing short of a humiliation for millions of people – the people who stand in those queues. Let us remember this when expressing the satisfaction that is so widespread in this Chamber today. I understand that we use the visa procedure as a carrot and stick, but this should apply to governments, and we should sympathise with the people who stand in the queues. Madam Commissioner, you are from Sweden. As you know, in the 1970s, your country, with Austria, was one of only two countries where there was a no-visa regime for the communist countries. As a citizen of Poland, I visited your country in 1976. Why? Because travelling to Sweden was visa-free. Of course I love your King, Swedish freedom and the economy, but please remember that, as long as we have visas, we should not feel comfortable."@en1
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