Debate: Screening of third country nationals at the external borders - European Criminal Records Information System  - Third Country Nationals - Common procedure for international protection in the Union - Establishing a return border procedure, and amending Regulation  / - Asylum and migration management - Addressing situations of crisis and force majeure - Establishment of 'Eurodac' for the comparison of fingerprints for the effective application of Regulation  No , for identifying an illegally staying third-country national or stateless person and on requests for the comparison with Eurodac data by Member States' law enforcement authorities and Europol for law enforcement purposes  - Union Resettlement Framework - Standards for the qualification of third-country nationals or stateless persons as beneficiaries of international protection - Standards for the reception of applicants for international protection
Date: WEDNESDAY, 10 APRIL 2024
Speaker: Sophia in 't Veld
Country: Poland
Language: EN

We’ve witnessed in recent years the total collapse of trust between the Member States. We’ve seen pushbacks and violence at the external borders, inhumane reception conditions and asylum seekers sleeping on the streets of the richest countries on this planet. Over the past eight years, we’ve worked tirelessly for a package that is in line with our values, while the political climate is getting chillier by the day. Compromises have been reached just before Christmas with great difficulty, and I find it tragic that this House found itself defending European values against the Council because, regretfully, many governments are not upholding those same values, and they will aim to deny as many asylum claims as possible and put as many people in indefinite detention as they can, including children. That is why the European Commission needs to be tough and enforce the law that we’re going to vote today. The European Commission will have to do a lot more to convince us that it will actually enforce the new pact, because in recent years it allowed human rights violations to happen and it didn’t lift a finger, I’m sorry to say. Dirty deals with Tunisia, colleagues, cannot be considered a confidence-building measure either, for that matter. But this House also has a responsibility. We will have to hold the European Commission to account, and we have not done so for the last five years. If we’re criticising the Commission – and I am criticising the Commission – we also have to acknowledge that we let the Commission get away with it for the past five years and we didn’t lift a finger. Today in the vote, the far right will be showing its true colours. It will vote against because it doesn’t really want solutions. It wants chaos and misery to continue because that’s what they feed on. There are also colleagues who will vote against for understandable and legitimate reasons, and I share many of their concerns. But I still think that we should endorse the package because we have a responsibility as politicians – because if we reject the pact, there will be nothing in its place. There’s not going to be a better alternative, but we’ll end up with a situation where no single rule will be respected anymore and we’ll end in a race to the bottom and the end to the right of asylum in Europe. We cannot, unfortunately, legislate away an ultra-right majority because even if you reject the package, that majority will still be there and it may actually be bigger in the next term. And are you going to entrust the next Parliament with the elaboration of our asylum policies? Well, not me, colleagues, not me. With regard to my own file – the Reception Conditions Directive – we’ve obtained many guarantees and safeguards for asylum seekers, especially for the most vulnerable. We have ensured a legal representative for all unaccompanied children from the day they arrive. We made sure that the detention of children is the absolute exception and only with judicial authorisation. We’ve guaranteed asylum seekers access to education and language courses and quicker access to the labour market. We ensured specific attention for vulnerable groups like women, children and LGBTIQ people, and the standards laid down in the Reception Conditions Directive will apply to the entire package, and upholding all of these elements in the implementation of the pact is crucial, because it can only work if it has the trust of everyone. The weakness lies not in the legal text, colleagues, that is quite clear. It lies in the implementation by the Member States and enforcement by the European Commission. So today we need to prove the cynics wrong and show that asylum is a European matter requiring a European response in line with our European values – and we take responsibility.