Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-01-16-Speech-1-085"
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"en.20060116.15.1-085"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to thank Mr Catania, whose contribution is, I think, particularly coherent and valuable. After the Treaty of Maastricht, which introduced the idea of European citizenship, and after the added value given by the draft Constitutional Treaty, I believe the time has come to place human beings at the focus of rights and duties and thus, if I may say so, at the heart of the European integration process.
Given that the aim is a fair one, however, I believe we should reflect on a regional dimension to the area of rights and duties. It is no coincidence that the integration plan that I have proposed casts mayors, provincial chairmen and regional governors as the main players in integration policy, more so even than the Member States, because it is precisely when one is closest to the issues affecting the citizens – be they from within the Community or from outside it – that one can understand the importance of the individual and his or her rights to education, to language teaching and to participation in local political life. These matters are all linked to the area where a person lives.
That is the strategy on which I am prepared to start work straight away, if Parliament will decide on its position.
The basis of the report is the consideration that European citizens, as indeed is confirmed by the regular Eurobarometer surveys, attribute great importance to the idea of citizenship, so much so that a good 70% of European citizens know about the principle of European citizenship – something that is true in very few other areas, again according to Eurobarometer. The problem is that many of these people do not have a clear idea of what rights and duties derive from it. I therefore think that work done in this respect is a positive step forwards.
I shall illustrate this with a very strange fact: more than two thirds of Europeans believe that European citizenship automatically confers the right to vote in national elections in the country of residence. These points therefore need to be clarified and, as proposed in the report, explicitly elucidated.
The chapter on the citizens’ right to information is very important, and is an area on which the Commission is already working. Efforts are being made right now to inform citizens better. The topic that I myself will be dealing with is the transposition of the new directive on European citizens’ right of residence, to ensure that the aspect of transparency of information is emphasised when the directive is incorporated by the Member States into their national bodies of law.
Another highly significant point is the one about non-European citizens, that is, third-country nationals who are legally resident in the European Union. I personally am very much in favour of integrating third-country nationals who are residing and working legally on EU territory, and that is also the Commission’s policy line.
I have published a draft European strategy on integration – Parliament will of course debate it – which is based precisely on the principle that citizenship at European level requires a framework of rights and duties for those who are not European citizens but who want to live, work and reside in Europe legally. I believe that that is the starting point for Mr Catania’s report, and that is the route that should be encouraged.
Alongside rights, of course, as everyone realises, there are duties. The fact is, therefore, that the gradual transformation of non-Europeans into European citizens on account of their residence must clearly be accompanied by respect for the laws of the country of residence and for those European guiding principles that are also enshrined in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.
That is all part of the integration programme on which we shall be working in 2006 and which I hope to finalise with the agreement of the Council and Parliament. An important first step is now in the pipeline, which is to grant long-term residents a permit to reside and move freely within the European Union. This comes in a directive that has to be transposed by 23 January this year – the deadline is thus in a few days’ time – and I am putting political pressure on all the Member States to transpose the directive in question and to issue residence permits to non-EU citizens who have been residing legally in Europe for more than five years.
There must, of course, be a thorough debate on the concept of European citizenship by residence. I am convinced that it is possible – perhaps without changing the structure of the Treaties, which do not provide for a link between European citizenship and residence – to start with a concept of civic citizenship: in other words, citizenship linked to the region and the place where the person works and lives. I think that will be feasible without introducing rigid concepts that might – or perhaps should – entail a need to change the Treaties. The European citizenship concept does not have its origin in residence but, since it is enshrined in the Treaties, if we want to introduce a new concept, the Treaties will have to be changed as well."@en1
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