Speeches

Mr President, summer holidays are knocking at our door and many EU citizens long to travel again. So in the coming weeks the ambition of a common COVID—19 certificate will be put to the test. Will the certificate be easily accessible? Will there be discrimination? And will the Member States apply the same rules? This does not seem to be the reality for now. We hear about additional restrictions and hassle at borders, restrictions that completely undermine the whole point of a single EU—wide certificate facilitating free travel. And not only do Member States make up their own rules, but there’s a huge lack of clear information. Citizens are totally confused and uncertain. So I urge the Commission to closely monitor and immediately intervene if Member States act against the regulation, because time is of the essence here, and to report back to Parliament. But, Commissioner, you also made a strong commitment yourself, namely to ensure financial support with a fund to promote affordable testing and to make more funding available if necessary. But when Parliament asked you to do so, you simply answered ‘No’. We see that mainly young people, who are not yet vaccinated, are facing the threshold of expensive tests. Their access to testing will not only facilitate free travel, but also protect others against the virus. So I urge the Commission to spend more money on free travel for all. Parliament wants you to do so for the sake of harmonisation, free travel, non—discrimination and for the protection of everyone’s health. I wish you a relaxing, free and healthy summer holiday.

Madam President, I’m very happy with all the criticism over the Hungarian developments, which are very concerning. But the EU Council also decided to consolidate the EU Turkey statement with new funding. And only the previous part-session, Parliament adopted the resolution with clear demands on migration deals. We must ensure human rights compliance, which requires impact assessments and independent monitoring, democratic and judicial control, and scrutiny of the use of funds. The EU Turkey statement doesn’t meet any of these criteria. So how do we monitor the situation of refugees? Is it taken into account that non-Syrian asylum seekers lack access to an asylum procedure? Will the funding of border controls result in a complete closure of the southern-east borders where refugees tried to escape violence? There are strong indications that forced returns to Syria are being made and that UNHCR doesn’t have access to any removal centre. Let me be clear: we must support the refugees in Turkey. Many of them are in precarious circumstances, and Turkey takes a large share but the conditions on border control and readmission have a human rights impact, and we must ensure that we support human rights that affect them in our external action.

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.