Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the Commission communication on a Community immigration policy with common standards and a common status for recognised asylum-seekers has provoked a much-needed debate and you deliberately arranged for an open debate at the outset, Commissioner Vitorino. Various possible scenarios have been presented and the possibilities for a common procedure and common principles have been investigated. I deeply regret that in contrast to the Pirker report it was not possible to achieve a broad compromise in committee. Unfortunately, in the case of the Evans report, instead of a reasonable consensus emerging, it was ideology that won the day. It is intended that both the grounds on which asylum is granted and the procedures involved should be extended across Europe. This is despite the fact, as you mentioned, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, that at present some 90% of asylum-seekers apply for asylum on purely economic grounds and are therefore rejected, and despite the fact that the present checking procedures can take up to eight years. I am sure that it is only possible to agree to extensions of this kind if you have totally lost sight of the position in your own country. What will the impact on us be if arrangements of the kind Mr Evans is presenting to us today become a reality, and if in future persecution by non-State agents and gender-related persecution are recognised? In practice this would amount to granting an unlimited right of residence in the EU to most families in the Islamic world. Why is that? Let me explain. No one would deny that in every Islamic country there are fundamentalist groups that use Islam to discriminate against women's rights, from the perspective of our system of values. Which means that any woman in an Islamic State can make a valid claim of persecution by non-State groups. If this were to be recognised in the EU, she would then be able to bring her entire family to join her. So the question we need to ask here is this: do we want to and are we able here in Europe to solve the problems of the Islamic world and the problems of the Islamic view of women? I have a clear answer to that: no! And the picture is even clearer now that we are all aware of the problems and risks that have arisen over the last few weeks. At the same time, Mr Evans, contrary to his original statement, wishes to abolish the concept of a safe third country and thus burden the in any case protracted procedures with additional checks. My own conclusion is therefore that in its present form the Evans report is irresponsible. It gives the Member States sufficient arguments for refusing to give us the right of codecision when further EU reforms in this area are being considered. It is evident that there is a majority in this House that is not yet mature enough to be given such responsibility. Mr Evans, if you are advocating an extension of the right of asylum here, then I would ask you what steps your own party, the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, has taken in this direction in recent years? I can tell you that it has certainly not dealt with things in this way. That is because it does not have the support of a majority of the population for such steps and Labour could otherwise expect to be voted out. Mr President-in-Office of the Council, I would like to be quite explicit about this, and it is obvious in any case: if we try to standardise every detail of the right of asylum across Europe in future, we will be unable to achieve agreement on this in the Council of Ministers. That is why I am specifically asking you and advising you to limit harmonisation to the necessary minimum standards. (Applause)

Political group: PPE-DE