Parliamentary responses to migration crises

Dear Colleagues,

The topic we will be speaking about now was not foreseen in the original program. But in the light of this week's crisis about the growing number of people moving over European territory looking for a safe harbour, President Lammert called me this Thursday to ask if I could make the opening remarks to an extra session on this topic. And I am grateful for this request, because I think it is most suitable and urgent that we discuss these matters.

Today more people are fleeing from violent conflicts than at any other time since the Second World War: more than fifty million people are on the run due to hunger, human rights abuses, oppression, terrorism or war. In Europe, we learn almost daily about the deaths of refugees. 70 people suffocated in a lorry. A 17 year old killed in a shoot-out with human traffickers. 600 drowned in the Mediterranean within three days. A 3 year old boy lying dead on the beach. These shocking images of men, women and children who died in seeking protection in Europe will stay with us for ever and should propel us into action. Every life lost is a stain on Europe and the values we stand for.

But, while these tragedies are occurring, some European governments are building fences to keep migrants out or refuse to host refugees. European leaders call for the reinstatement of internal border controls or haggle over quotas at all-night summits. And at the same time more people set out to seek refuge in Europe. We now witness a Europe without a common policy. You cannot solve a global problem with 28 national policies.

If you would distribute all these refugees among all Member States, the situation could be managed. But if you concentrate all refugees in some of the Member States, there is a problem. We need a fair system of sharing among Member States, we need a distribution mechanism. Just like Commission President Juncker i and the European Parliament have called for, and what is now also supported by Chancellor Merkel i and President Hollande i.

Where national politicians may have failed, normal citizens have played a tremendous role in solving the acute needs of the people coming to us. The human decency displayed by thousands of Europeans who went to greet arriving refugees and supplied them with food and water, collected clothes or toys, deserve our honour, and must drive the actions of us, politicians.

I know that migration is not only an issue in Europe these days. As UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon i has rightly said, migration is a global problem these days. In Asia many people are fleeing from poverty, war or religious conflict. Australia has taken a very strict approach, not letting people come ashore anymore. This is not the approach of the European Union. And the United States, unfortunately not present today, is struggling since many years with migratory flows at its Southern borders. They have even erected a fence. On the other hand, the US has developed many years ago a system for legal migration into the country: the green card.

We should also realise that those refugees come due to problems which we should also help solving. If we want to have a sustainable solution, we need to find ways out of the conflicts in the Middle East and contribute to fighting the terrible terrorism of the so called Islamic State. And we must keep contributing to fighting poverty and all problems linked to it, like failing states and corruption.

I believe national selfishness can never be an answer to global problems. In Europe, this means that the EU institutions have an important role to play as mediators between Member States. The European Parliament is the driving force behind this: we have been calling for years for a European solution to migration. In fact, we need three things:

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  first a unified asylum system (in terms of processing times, results, standards and lists of safe countries),
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  second, a system of temporary protection for people fleeing civil wars or ecological disasters,
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  and third, a system of legal migration for those wanting to work in the EU - an equivalent of immigration laws of other parts of the world..

To my European colleagues I would say: We as national and European Parliaments should urge our governments to contribute better to such a European solution. But I am also eager to hear from our Japanese colleague and the Canadian Clerk, how these countries perceive the situation. The G 7 leaders wrote in their final declaration of the 7-8 June Summit that they 'reaffirm their commitment to prevent and combat the trafficking of migrants'. I can only applaud this conclusion, but hope that at next year's summit will go into some more detail about the causes of migration as well about how to deal with the millions of people seeking refuge.