Migration and further work on the Asylum Package, as well as strengthening the principles of the rule of law, will be the main priorities of the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee, its members said on Tuesday 24 September during a discussion on the subject.
Terry Reintke (Greens/EFA, Germany) said that “we cannot let [the dossier] rot in the Council” whilst “we have worked hard to find a compromise between all political families”, said the MEP, referring to the position found at the end of 2017 in Parliament on Cecilia Wiktsröm's report. The green elected representative is of the opinion that, in general, more “pressure” is needed on the EU Council to move the issues forward.
Cornelia Ernst (GUE/NGL, Germany) said that “we cannot move forward like this”, with the MEP referring to the ad hoc agreement reached in Malta on 23 September. “We have a good proposal [editor’s note: on Dublin]; I do not understand why it is not being dealt with by the EU Council”, the German added.
Jeroen Lenaers (EPP, Netherlands) also thinks that “all the work we have already done” on this Asylum Package, especially on Eurodac, the database of asylum seekers' fingerprints, “mustn’t be thrown away”.
In general, many MEPs also insisted on the actual implementation on the ground of the decisions taken, as Birgit Sippel (S&D, Germany) or Sophie in't Veld (Renew Europe, Netherlands) pointed out.
During the “last mandate, we decided on many new measures in the field of criminal justice, hate crimes and the fight against terrorism, but several measures are still not fully implemented”, the socialist said. According to the second, there is a “huge gap” between the pressure exerted by Member States on Parliament to validate measures and the “absence of any urgency” when it comes to implementing them. The member continues to think that more thought should be given to the relevance of initiatives before they are launched. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic and Marion Fontana)