Strasbourg, 30/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) devoted the entire afternoon and evening of Tuesday 29 September to the migration crisis, resulting in two resolutions focused on the values on which the oldest of the pan-European institutions are founded.
“The Council of Europe is the symbol of the values which unite us”, Spain's Pedro Agramunt (European People's Party) started off by pointing out. “The value of belonging is yet to be developed, because Europe is not a continent you belong to for money, but one you break free from when it is a matter of solidarity. The refugee crisis is putting Europe to the test; if we fail, there will be no more Europe”.
However, this crisis is not just a European one, he went on to stress, underlining the “vital cooperation with the Arab League and the African Union” in the framework of concerted and global action providing “measures for the countries of origin and transit”.
Anticipating an “Iceberg Europe”, with the part above the water possibly seeming hostile to migrants, but which counts “below the surface of the water”, “a Europe of solidarity made up of millions of people prepared to help”, Laura Boldrini, president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, who was invited to attend the debates, said that “this problem, which was originally Greek, Maltese and Italian, has finally become European”. “The European Union is taking measures to ensure that the member states recognise the need to share the burden”, she said, “some countries are reluctant, this is to be expected: any major change will meet with reluctance”, but in any case, Boldrini went on, “walls and barbed wire, which run counter to the European values”, are merely “signs of weakness and shortsightedness”.
Thorbjorn Jagland, secretary general of the Council of Europe, stressed the vital need to organise solidarity and to create legal paths to Europe. “Without this, crime and the trafficking in human beings will continue. We know this”.
Anne Brasseur, president of PACE, took the floor in derogation to the regulatory proceedings of this type of debate to speak on a subject close to her heart. “I had to speak today”, she said, having referred to the summit the EU held last week devoted to quotas for the distribution of migrants between the member states. She said that “this debate, which came too late, took the form of a schoolyard brawl, a horse traders' fair, but we are not talking about horses, we are talking about human beings. All of us, parliamentarians of the Council of Europe, must go back home and convince our governments to do more”.
Convincing them is the lever arm of the Council of Europe and it is not easy, the Norwegian Socialist Lise Christoffersen stressed, referring to the high number of reports debated and voted on by PACE to “sound the alarm” on this migration issue, without getting any impression that this had been taken on board …
The Italian Socialist Michele Nicoletti, author of a report entitled “After Dublin - the urgent need for a real European asylum system “, welcomed the large majority in favour of the resolution attached to his text. 98 members called for the creation of a “European refugee” status allowing those in receipt of international protection to transfer their residence and other rights between the countries of the EU (on the basis of a mutual recognition of national decisions to grant the status). 19 members voted against and seven abstained.
It was, therefore, a very clear message sent out by PACE and this was also the case with the resolution attached to the report of Dutch Socialist Tineke Strik on the importance of involving transit countries in the migration policy of the EU. Urging the EU to put an end to the practices of refoulement and to offer “substantial, unconditional and long-term support” to improve the protection of migrants' rights in these countries, this text won 81 votes in favour, 12 against and 13 abstentions.
These convincing results, it should be highlighted, brought together just 134 voters for one of the texts and 106 for the other, out of a hemicycle of 324 members. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)