I voted against the report by Mrs Avilés Perea on the consequences of globalisation for women immigrants from the Mediterranean countries by the Committee on Women’s Rights and Equal Opportunities, because some of the amendments adopted blatantly ignore la Palisse’s dictum that nobody is expected to do the impossible. Indeed, a small majority of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Equal Opportunities again managed to exaggerate the issue by an incredible amount, thus distorting the main aim of this report, whose basic position I support; in other words, to include the dimension of gender and mainstreaming in the European Union’s Euro-Mediterranean policy, with particular focus on globalisation and its implications for female migration. I do not see the link between the demands for establishing a would-be ‘Euro-Mediterranean citizenship’ and this report. We understand citizenship of our Member States and European Union citizenship. Unless I am unaware of the true meaning and the legal significance of the term “citizenship”, I do not understand how we can go as far as inventing a Euro-Mediterranean citizenship, which would lead to establishing a third type of citizenship for citizens of the Member States, one more than citizens of the non-Mediterranean Member States possess. In that case, why not call for a Euro-Baltic or Euro-Nordic citizenship...I could go on. What about the states in the southern Mediterranean, which do not belong to Europe and certainly have no desire or vocation to join the European Union? Some statements and demands made about immigration policy are totally ludicrous and unnecessary, as they state the obvious but do not take the facts of the matter into consideration. Others confuse Euro-Mediterranean policy with the policy of cooperation with the APC countries, which is another matter altogether. I believe that the widespread condemnation of employers, who are accused indiscriminately of abusing migrant women, is unacceptable. In my view, neither the happiness nor the quality of life of women in the Mediterranean area is served by making migrants out of ever more of them and by causing migration towards the EU’s Member States to be seen as a desirable goal, thanks to increasingly lax regulations concerning visas and the treatment of illegal residents. To claim that there is a link between responsible regulation of immigration and trafficking in human beings is, in my opinion, as absurd as the demands to set quotas of migratory flows towards the European Union. Our goal instead should be to keep migratory flows within reasonable limits which are also acceptable to the citizens of EU Member States and to do this by operating a policy of development aid and partnership to enable both women and men to remain in their country of origin, where they can benefit from a standard of living, social security benefits and equal rights and opportunities that are similar to those that should be available in our own countries. While we are on this subject, we should remember that there are countries bordering the Mediterranean that are not, and never will be, members of the EU and that have a natural wealth that is far greater than ours, but the corrupt dictatorships of these countries deprive their people, women especially, of the most basic human, social and economic rights. It is by persuading these countries, within the framework of a clearly defined partnership, to change their internal policies rather than drive their citizens towards immigration that we shall be doing the most good, above all, to women and children who are the main victims of certain cultures and religions which, under the hypocritical pretext of protecting them, deprive them of the most basic human rights.

Political group: PPE-DE