7
Oct
2021
Watch
European Union Agency for Asylum (continuation of debate)
Mr President, we, the European Greens, have long called for the creation of a genuine European Asylum Agency. However, the fact that its mandate does not enter into force as soon as it is adopted makes a lot of sense. The Manichaeism of European migration policies is increasingly indigestible. Member States are still in a hurry to implement restrictive legislation, but they require deadlines when it comes to protecting the fundamental rights of exiles. Frontex’s budget is doubled, despite the many charges against it, but Member States negotiate until the end of shabby deadlines for the establishment of a fundamental rights officer and a complaints mechanism. Strong with the weak, weak with the strong: This is the motto of the European Union and its Member States. In France, this means over-militarising the border with the United Kingdom; allow between 1,000 and 1,500 people, mostly families, to survive in unworthy conditions in Calais and Grande-Synthe; harassing, humiliating and robbing children, women and men; Human Rights Watch denounces these conditions once again in a report this morning. In Italy, it is a sentence of 15 years in prison for Mimmo Lucano, the former mayor of Riace, who has devoted his mandates to a welcome worthy of exiles, when a far-right activist who has shot exiles is sentenced to only 12 years. In Denmark, this means confiscating refugees’ property upon arrival in the country; This means offering cutting barbed wire to Lithuania for its anti-migrant fence. In Poland, it means declaring a state of emergency at the border to put a screed on a humanitarian and human scandal: exiles left abandoned, without food, without shelter. Six dead already. How much more before the European Union takes firm action? If that is the case, we will do without European solidarity, thank you very much. You think you are flattering your electorates, you are only stirring up hatred. In France, Italy and throughout Europe, citizens, volunteers and associations are outraged. They tell me, they call us. They're ashamed of me, too.