Mr President, what is the best way to keep out all the undesirables? What further barriers can we add to fortress Schengen to protect ourselves from outside threats? That is the impression made on me by some aspects of the reports we will be voting on today; at the same time I approve the three rejections. Less than a month after the tragedy of the East Sea that ran aground on the French coast, with 908 people crammed into the holds of an old tub, including three babies born during the crossing, we run the risk of perpetuating the image of a Europe that is suspicious of foreigners and wants, above all, to strengthen its borders, while alleging that the intention is to combat the trafficking in human beings. The European Union cannot pursue an immigration policy based purely on policing, as the President of the French Human Rights League said a few days ago. The news shows us more horrors by the day and we hear expressions of indignation and emotion from all sides. We are bound to be shocked by the pictures of Kurdish families, dreaming of peace and freedom, who came to seek a future without persecution. They follow on from the pictures of the 58 Chinese immigrants who reached Dover only to be found dead among crates of tomatoes, of the fugitives from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Albania, Iraq, Africa or any other region stricken by poverty and war. Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. So the time has now come to strengthen the right of asylum as set out in the Geneva Convention; the idea of temporary protection, which does not prejudge recognition of refugee status, goes in that direction. We know that trafficking in human beings exists and that there are criminal networks. We are all aware that fabulous sums can be made out of exploiting human misery. So if we are to combat this trafficking effectively we will have to attack the roots of the evil. Repression alone is not enough. We must impose severe penalties on those who organise and are responsible for this trafficking but we must also look into the reasons why individuals, exploited in a cowardly way, find themselves shunted from country to country, from continent to continent, in their search for El Dorado – all in the name of liberal globalisation. We must not confuse the traffickers with their victims. We must seek out and penalise those who exploit illegal labour. In fact, immigration and economics go hand in hand. Yet the proposal to harmonise the penalties imposed on carriers could prove to be the wrong track to follow and could even be turned against certain people who are simply trying to help men and women under threat. Let us not make solidarity and humanity into an offence. While the European Union is rightly seeking to pursue a humane development policy, let us make it clear that development depends on the free movement of people, their knowledge, their culture, as well as their suffering and their hopes. We must guarantee that freedom of movement. A society that decides to be tight-fisted and selective in granting residence permits, visas, places in holding centres, is a closed and sectarian society. Do we want a Europe that shuts itself off from the world; do we want a Europe that sorts people out and divides them up into good and bad refugees, acceptable immigrants and permanent exiles? When will we see Council initiatives and proposals for directives drawn up in a spirit of openness to the world, a spirit of welcome and humanity, rather than one concerned primarily with policing and security? Frantz Fanon wrote, “We always want to walk in the company of man, of all men.” I hope with all my heart that Europe can finally offer us that freedom.

Political group: GUE-NGL