Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-02-16-Speech-4-024-000"
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"en.20120216.5.4-024-000"2
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"Mr President, we know that this is a difficult debate. It was difficult the first time round. Indeed, at that time, some of us who were in the House felt that the directive that we are currently discussing was too flexible and we launched a case before the ECJ concerning a couple of the provisions of the directive. Unfortunately, from the point of view of some of us, the ECJ found in the wrong way, but nevertheless it upheld two of the issues, not least about children joining their families.
So while there are those who argue that this directive is unnecessarily lax, I think that we can see within the directive how we look differently at issues of flexibility. At present, four Member States covered by the directive are using it in a more and more restrictive manner, despite the rulings of the European Court of Justice. I think that is an issue that the Commission needs to look at. As someone said, the whole goal of this directive was in favour of family reunification as a measure of integration. Integration measures were meant to be part of the goal, not a barrier to family reunification. We know about people being asked to take language courses abroad when those courses do not exist and we know about highly restrictive costs in terms of coming to join family members. All of these measures are put in place to actually erect barriers. I believe, and my group believes, that those certainly need to be challenged.
We are also hearing a great deal about issues of marriage and whether marriages are genuine or not. This is, of course, incredibly difficult to determine, not least when you look at the divorce rates of some EU nationals. But, nevertheless, there are ways in which we can deal with this. Some Member States already have legislation in place on issues relating to forced marriage, rather than arranged marriage. The EU has programmes in third countries looking at the empowerment of young women and girls and indeed trying to change family attitudes on the issue. There are also measures that you can take at interview stage to try to establish whether it is a forced marriage or not. I am really interested that people are so concerned about this because a number of us in this House want to bring forward measures looking at the question of forced marriage. We look forward to support from some unusual sources in terms of women’s rights on this.
There is flexibility in the directive. We know that. As I say, we have seen ECJ rulings that have tried to put a limit on certain parts of the flexibility, but I think that, rather than looking to open up the directive, we need to ask the Commission what it has been doing in terms of infringement proceedings. In 2008, they said this directive was inadequately transposed and inadequately implemented in a number of Member States. What has happened since to improve that situation?"@en1
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