Brussels, 29/01/2004 (Agence Europe) - "The message is clear. Migrants need Europe. But Europe also needs migrants. A closed Europe would be a meaner, poorer, weaker, older Europe. An open Europe will be a fairer, stronger, younger Europe - provided you manage migration", declared the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, addressing MEPs meeting for a plenary in Brussels on 29 January where he received the Sakharovo prize for freedom of thought 2003, awarded by the European Parliament, to all UN personnel, particularly Sergio Vieira de Mello, killed in an attack, together with 21 of his colleagues on 19 August in Baghdad. Survivors of the attack and parents of victims attended the ceremony, which provided the occasion for Kofi Annan to launch an appeal to fraternity and openness to others. "The hope of further enlargement in years to come promises to build other bridges of co-operation and understanding, including between the West and Islam, and between peoples who have fought each other in bloody wars", affirmed Mr Annan who noted, "As time goes by, the continent is also experiencing an enlargement of what it means to be European. I look forward to the day when Europe rejoices as much in diversity within States as wit does in diversity between them". He also stressed that, "people who migrate today for the same reasons that tens of millions of Europeans once left your shores". He also pointed out that "The experience of some migrants today is reminiscent of the hostility that Huguenots once face in England, as did Germans, Italians and Irish in the United States and Chinese in Australia". The Secretary General also considered that, "If we truly forge a global partnership for development, in order to meet the Millennium Development Goals, we will do a lot to reduce the incentive for people to leave. He stressed the collective responsibility for refugees and criticised too resetrictive interpretations of the 1951 Convention on refugees. Mr Annan indicated that seven out of ten refugees sought asylum in developing countries and deplore the fact that the, "asylum system is broken, and the promises of the Convention is broken too. Your asylum system needs the resources to process claims fairly…European states need to move forward to a system of joint processing and sharing of responsibilities". Acknowledging that each country had the right to decide which voluntary migrants they accept without being forced to. He warned that did not mean that they should pull up the drawbridge and behind closed doors pretend that the tragedy that is not happening as it was important that some of the countries closing their doors to immigration needed immigrants. He calculated that without immigration the populations of the EU-25, which was 452 million in 2000 would be less than 400 million by 2050 and countries like Italy, Germany, Austria and Greece "would see their populations drop by around a quarter" and one in three Italians would be aged over 65.
Kofi Annan is therefore encouraging European countries to open up greater avenues for legal migration, for skilled and unskilled workers, for family reunification and economic improvement, for temporary and permanent workers". At the same time he declared that ""integration is a two-way street" and that immigrants also had to "adjust to their new societies". He stressed that integration was essential and that societies cannot "extract the labour of immigrants and ignore other aspects of their humanity". He quoted the "guest worker programmes" of the 1960s and the great Swiss writer Max Frisch, "We wanted workers, but we got people…acknowledging and responding to that reality is one of your central challenges". He also called for international co-operation and that the Union played a key role. He concluded that only bilateral, regional and global co-operation would allow for the creation of partnerships between countries of origin and host countries beneficial to both sides and the means of making immigration an engine for development, fighting drug traffickers and adopting common standards on treating and managing immigration flows. The UN Secretary General welcomed in this context the creation last December of the Global Commission on International Migration, co-chaired by distinguished figures from Sweden an South Africa, "a welcome instance of North-South co-operation".
Support from Parliament, Council and Commission for multilateralism and strengthened UN
Thursday, the emotion was great on in the presence of the widow and sone of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the brother and sister of other victimes of the attack in Bagdad, Reham Al-Farra and Manuel Martin Oar, and four other survivors of the attack. Several other Sakharov prize winners were also present, Xanana Gusmao, président of East Timor, Ibrahim Rugowa, président of Kosovo, Senta Kurtovic, from the newspaper Oslobodenje, Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng, the Algérienne Salima Ghezali, représentantatives from Basta Ya (opponents of the terrorism of the ETA), Dom Zacharias Kamwenho. The serious face of , Président Cox regretted the forced absence of other Sakharov prize winners: Aung San Suu Kyi from Burma, Leyla Zana from Turkey andOswaldo Payà from Cuba (the last two were sent messages of solidarity). The EU and the United Nations are based on shared values, declared Pat Cox, noting that the EU "is the most successful conflict solving process the world had ever had". He reafrfirmed parliament's commitment to multilateralism and said that they supported the fight against global terrorism but recognised that they should also fight poverty in the world. He asserted that they were firmly against proliferation but that the European in sticne was for commitment and not isolation. Cox expalined that they did not want their borders to be "porous" against international crime but neither did they want a "fortress Europe". He pointed out that they had faith in the state of law which had galvanised the parliament into making it one of their most coherent and visible advocates of the International Criminal Court. Cox explained that they would have preferred a fari trial rather than experienced in Guantanamo Bay.
The president of the Council Brian Cowen pointed out that the UN personel had carried out heroic and often unknown work which refelected the most frequent image of the UN in on of the most serious political dramas expereinced at the Security Council. He said that it also reflected the deep commitment of so many people in the worl. He gave assurances that the EU supported a strengthened United Nations and more intense cooperation with the UN which was a central priority of the Irish presidency. The Irish foreign affairs minister said that only multilateralism as embodied in the UN charter could defend human rights and humanitarian law. On Koffi Annan's central theme of emmigration, Cowen alluded to the experience of generatiosn of Irish condemned to emmigration. On the subject of asylum, he pointed to the participation of Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, at the recent informal meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers in Dublin (EUROPE 23 January p 7). In October 1999, the European Council of Tampere decided to set up a freedom, security and jsutice area in the EU and that this freedom was not the exclusive priviledge of Union ciitzens but was there was those whose circumstances justified that they had access to our territory, affirmed Mr Cowen.
Sergio Vieira de Mllo was gallant, wise, sashing, principled and immensely effective", I saw him in action in Hong Kong, Kosovo and East Timor, exclaimed Chris Patten, European Commissioner for External Relations, on whose part the EU was to receive the Sakharov prize, not just once but four times, as it met all the four criteria laid out by the Parliament (defending human rights and democracy, fighting for minoritiy rights, respect for the rule of law and respect of international law). Kofi Annan contibuted "enormously" to the strengthening of United Nations, in a sentnce he made on how they should meet the challenges of the founders who would have never imagined such a role or opposition to it.
Kofi Annan's words on immigration to become our governments' policy, sought by Daniel Cohn-Bendit - Gianfranco dell'Alba calls for Emma Bonino to become High Commissioner for Human Rights
Hans-Gert Pöttering, president of the EPP-ED said that he hoped that Kofi Annan would see the day when the European Union had a seat at the National Security Council. He also referred to Sakharov and his widow Elena Bonner. The CDU MEP regretted that the Cuban Sakharov prize had not been allowed to go to Brussels and hoped that the future of the people in Cuba could be given a better hearing. Enrique Baron the president of the Socialist group shouted at the latter that he had just accused the UN of not being efficient and quoted a number of examples where the United Nations had played a significant role in Africa, Asia and Latin America (he also underlined the work by Mr Blix and Mr Al Aradei in the fight againt the proliferation of weapons of mass destrution). The president of the Liberal group, Graham Watson wanted the UN to return to Iraq as soon as the ecurity situation allowed, as a legitimate democratic government in Iraq would not be possible without the presence of the United Nations.
As the main contributor to the UN budget the EU bore a lot of responsibility in reform of the organisation, he commented. The president of the GUE/NGL group Francis Wurtz also insisted on the need for a peaceful solution for Iraq and pointed to the massive mobilisations of European in the streets, in support of the UN to try and prevent the "bloody adventure" in the country. Mr Wurtz said that they should not limit themselves to mobilising against terrorism, "the impasse in the Middle East" with so many victims on both sides "had to stop". Daniel Cohn-Bendit, co-president of the Greens-EFA, said that in listening to the speech, reminded him of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream". Cohn-Bendit said that he also had a dream that emigration become "the speech of all of us, that Heads of government who say that they admire you and what you say, your lucidity and your humanism". Mr Cohn-Bendit admitted that his group would have liked to award the prize to a woman or a man from Iran or Chechnya and that Mr Annan as a Sakharov prize winner sought to free Leyla Zana and that the Jewish and Palestinian people lived in peace. Charles Pasqua, president of the UEN qualified what had been said on emigration, addressing Mr Annan thus, "I would have liked to hear you condemn the economic consequences of globalisation" (he pointed out that according to General de Gaulle, the problems of under development could have in large part been resolved by setting aside 1% of GDP "which would not been too hard to do". Jens-Peter Bonde president of the EDD said that when he was young he wanted to work for the United Nations, which had encouraged Annan: he said that Annan should not be the Secretary General of a "divided Security Council" but the General-in-Chief of an organisation that brought help to a world ravaged by famine and conflicts where millions of children were victims of anti-personnel mines and lost their parents to AIDS. Gianfranco Dell'Alba the Italian Radical asked Annan to support the candidacy of the MEP (and former European Commissioner for humanitarian aid) Emma Bonino, without mentioning her name. Last year the Italian presidency supported the candidacy of an MEP, also supported by the president of the European Commission, he said, considering that such a choice reflected the European commitment to the UN and human rights. In conclusion Elmar Brok (CDU), president of the foreign affairs committee in charge of Sakharov prizes, explained that they had to do everything possible to renew co-operation on the ground.
Marie Anne Isler Béguin presents Kofi Annan with dossier on indigenous peoples
French Green Marie Anne Isler Béguin used this opportunity to present Kofi Annan with the dossier on rehabilitating the fundamental rights of the indigenous peoples, "these survivors of ancient civilisations but who also fundamentally support the ideas of ecology" in the world which has become materialist and superficial.