Mr President, Commissioner, honourable Members, we are able to celebrate a ten-year anniversary almost exactly to the day. Almost exactly ten years ago to the day, we started discussing which country should in fact be responsible for processing asylum applications. Then the Dublin Convention came into force. Yet, to this day, we have failed to make Dublin truly enforceable, in other words, we have been unable to establish a suitable instrument of control. We have been discussing the fact that we need an instrument of this kind, for years, but so far to no avail, and tomorrow we will have our one and only chance to actually complete Eurodac. I would be delighted if we could. A great many Council Presidents, who have held office in the intervening period, would be delighted too, and everyone has promised that they will make it an absolute priority to try and make Eurodac a reality. This has been a long, drawn-out business, and it concerns an important issue. Why do we need Eurodac and what can it do? Eurodac is a system that will enable us to compare fingerprints and ascertain in an appropriate manner, which country was the first point of contact for the refugee, and, as such, which country is responsible for processing the asylum application. This will also allow for a distribution of the burden amongst the Member States. And, of course, it is also an instrument that will be used to establish if an applicant has submitted asylum applications before. In other words, it is also an instrument for fighting abuse and illegal activity. It is an instrument that we both want, and need, to have at all costs. As I said, it has been a long, drawn-out business and the last time we discussed it in Parliament was December 1999. The vast majority of us were agreed, firstly on the fact that we must get Eurodac up and running, and secondly, on the conditions under which it should be implemented. Above all, we have seen eye to eye with Commissioner Vitorino throughout, and I would like to thank him, because he has moved heaven and earth to enable Eurodac to at last become a reality. Parliament established that the implementing powers would be conferred on the Commission, in accordance with the provisions of the EC Treaty. However, immediately after we had taken this decision, the Council met in December and, for reasons which we do not understand at all, shelved these joint proposals from Parliament and the Commission, and reserved the most important implementing powers for itself. Consequently, because there had been a substantial amendment, this required reconsultation of Parliament, i.e. we have had to review the situation, albeit only in respect of the relevant points, i.e. Articles 22 and 23 alone. We confined ourselves to these areas in committee, with the exception of Mrs Boumediene-Thiery, who sparked off a new discussion. I do not know what she was hoping to achieve in this way. The object of the exercise was simply to deal with Articles 22 and 23. The new proposal relating to these articles accommodates the Council’s wish to retain sole responsibility for the most important implementing powers, i.e. those regarding the collection, transmission and comparison of fingerprints, those for the blocking of the data concerning applicants for asylum, and those for drawing up statistics on asylum applicants. There was unanimous agreement in committee that we should stand by our original proposal and reject that of the Council. Why? For two quite crucial reasons. Firstly, the Council’s move is contrary to Article 202 of the EC Treaty, which establishes the principle that the implementation of the rules which the Council lays down shall be conferred on the Commission. This is particularly important in this case. The Commission could take a far more impartial – i.e. it would be less likely to accommodate specific national interests – and objective line when it comes to implementing this regulation. Therefore we as a Parliament support this. There is also a second reason as to why we oppose the Council’s proposal. It works against Parliament because it excludes us, because there is no longer a comitology procedure, and because we will no longer have access or entitlement to the information we need. This proposal would whittle away Parliament’s rights. For these two highly convincing reasons, we are in favour of the proposal submitted by the Commission and Commissioner Vitorino, to the effect that implementing powers should be bestowed on the Commission, and I would urge you all to attend tomorrow’s vote. This will be our opportunity to make Europe a safer place, and to take action against abuse. Let us seize this opportunity and use this chance to at last make Eurodac a reality.

Political group: PPE-DE