Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-10-13-Speech-3-108"
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"en.20041013.6.3-108"2
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"Mr President, at the 5 November Council, the Member States are going to decide upon new political directions in pursuit of the area of freedom, security and justice. Given Europeans’ growing expectations in this area, it is essential for us to be ambitious in defining our new priorities.
We have arrived at a crucial moment for the area of freedom, security and justice. What is certain is that many advances have been made since Tampere. The ambitious objectives then set enabled the European arrest warrant to be adopted, albeit with difficulty. This is an essential tool in the fight against terrorism and organised crime. We have also managed to define minimum standards in the field of asylum, even though we might lament the fact that these are bottom-up standards. Even so, the overall outcome is still unsatisfactory. The results obtained fall well short of what we might have expected following the Tampere Summit. There is a striking lack of political will on the part of the Member States, and the unanimity rule has, in many cases, reduced us to paralysis. As a result, the Member States have failed to transpose European decisions in good time. Implementation of a large part of European legislation has, at best, sustained unacceptable delays.
In the area of asylum, the unanimity rule has reduced us to settling for the lowest common denominator. The European context should, on the contrary, permit upward harmonisation, particularly when it comes to the protection of fundamental rights, asylum procedures and the fight against forms of discrimination. Finally, European immigration policy has been reduced by the Member States to its repressive apparatus. Thus, the Council has adopted, against Parliament’s advice, provisions for joint flights for the purpose of removing refugees. As we have all said, insufficient efforts are being made to permit legal immigration. Unfortunately, the last ‘Justice and Home Affairs’ Council does not augur well. The EU’s part in supporting the creation of national asylum systems in Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya again conveys the impression that the Member States’ priority is to push the problems back outside their borders. Nor must the debate on the handling of asylum requests and on transit camps outside the EU ever lead to asylum being dealt with externally.
The new priorities of the area of freedom, security and justice must, above all, enable all the European decisions adopted to date to be implemented. The new objectives that have been set must, among other things, do more to promote fundamental rights and genuine harmonisation of asylum. I would therefore ask the Council and the Commission what has become of the directive relating to minimum standards concerning the procedure for granting and withdrawing refugee status. Steps should also be taken in future to ensure that the Member States are forced, within the period allowed, to transpose European decisions into national law. It is, finally, essential that the European Parliament be fully involved in the area of liberty, security and justice. I would thus appeal to the Council to follow the lead of our rapporteur and chairman of our committee, who asks the Member States to take the decisions necessary for codecision to be applied in this area.
I shall make use of the few seconds remaining to me to thank Commissioner Vitorino for the work of very high quality that he has undertaken and pursued with the European Parliament. It is customary to say that no one is indispensable, but when someone is right for the job, they are missed when they are no longer there."@en1
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