Strasbourg, 16/02/2001 (Agence Europe) - When voting on the report submitted by Ozan Ceyhun (German member of the Socialist Group of Turkish origin), the European Parliament rejected through a crushing majority France's initiative in view of the adoption of a directive aimed at defining assistance to entry, movement and irregular stay - another initiative by a Member State on an issue relating to justice and home affairs. The aim of the French initiative was to create, within the Schengen area, a penal framework against "smugglers" who facilitate entry and free movement of illegal immigrants. Parliament's rapporteur - Parliament is only consulted on a single reading on this issue - in particular accused the French initiative to comprising measure coming under both the first pillar (draft directive aimed at defining assistance to illegal entry) an the third pillar (draft framework-decision on repression against those providing such assistance).
Finally, on Thursday plenary rejected both the French initiative and the amendments that Mr. Ceyhun wanted to make, who stated that assistance to illegal entry into a country of the EU should only be viewed as a criminal act if undertaken in any way for profit, whereas assistance provided for humanitarian reasons should not be punished. Thus, according to Ceyhun, carriers having brought persons seeking political asylum into the EU should not be hauled before the courts.
Alima Boumediene-Thiery (French, Green) welcomed the rejection of the French proposal, stating that "repressive policies regarding immigration and visas have only succeeded in increasing the number of people without papers", and that the solutions envisaged in the French proposal "engender tragedies like those of Dover, Gibraltar, and those of people without papers in Spain, Belgium or France, on hunger strike to obtain recognition of their rights". It is clear that both the French initiative and the rapporteur's amendments had to be rejected, said, for his part, the OVP member Hubert Pirker, for whom, by not forming part of a comprehensive concept, the French initiative would have tended to worsen the situation, whereas Mr. Ceyhun's idea of tolerating assistance to illegal immigration for humanitarian reasons "would revolutionise" the European legal system.