What Tineke spoke about.

Madam President, I would like to thank the rapporteur again for the report and the strong position. Of course, 2020 was an extraordinary year due to the pandemic, but also before, we observed the shocking lack of compliance with the rules on border control, internal border controls that were not temporary nor justified, and consistent reports about pushbacks at many places along our external borders – a grave violation of Article 4 of the Schengen Borders Code. It’s important that we look ahead and discuss a new Schengen strategy. But whatever the outcome will be, without compliance and enforcement, no border policy is credible. What will hopefully help is a more robust, swift and transparent Schengen evaluation and monitoring mechanism, with much more attention for fundamental rights. I call upon the Council and the Commission to ensure that Parliament can act as a co-legislator while making those new rules – because societal support for our border policies starts with democratic control.

Madam President, on behalf of my colleague, shadow rapporteur Alice Kuhnke, many thanks to the rapporteur for her great work and achievements. I think due to the pressure of the European Parliament a number of important improvements have been made in this legislation, like more emphasis on non-discrimination of fundamental rights, support for humanitarian visa, and improving the visa policies and search and rescue as an autonomous implementing measure. But we object to some other elements like the unlimited possibilities to fund border cooperation with third countries and to the large-scale IT systems interoperable in the hotspots. But our main objection actually, for the moment, is in general that we have big problems with agreeing at the moment on a huge amount of financial support for external border management in a time of persistent and consistent allegations of fundamental rights violations at the border without transparent and thorough investigations or enforcement actions from the Commission. We first need to see improvements in respect for fundamental rights and accountability and this funding should be made conditional upon fundamental rights compliance. It should be a tool to demand monitoring and compliance and to link the funding to the condition that a Member State which cooperates with Frontex fully also cooperates with monitoring and investigations by Frontex. I would like to hear and see from the Commission that this will be part of the gain. But for now, for the reasons I gave, we will abstain.