Meeting of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs in Strasbourg on Migration. Statements by Matthias RUETE, Director General of the Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs, Ska KELLER (Greens/EFA, DE), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), Kashetu KYENGE (S&amp;D, IT), Birgit SIPPEL (S&amp;D, DE) and Cecilia WIKSTR&Ouml;M (ALDE, SE)

Strasbourg

meeting

Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

migration and refugees in Europe (T)

LENAERS, Jeroen (EPP, NL)

SIPPEL, Birgit (S&D, DE)

WIKSTRÖM, Cecilia (ALDE, SE)

KELLER, Ska (Greens/EFA, DE)

KYENGE, Cécile Kashetu (S&D, IT)

Migration: extracts from the meeting of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

External shot of the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

SOUNDBITE (English), Matthias RUETE, Director General of the Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs, "The debate, as I said, has been quite acrimonious but I'm very happy to say that even the European Council has set a figure, 40,000".

SOUNDBITE (English), Matthias RUETE, Director General of the Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs, "(The) Second element that we have proposed is a European resettlement scheme, with 20,000 resettlement places over two years. We will hopefully be having the commitment from the member states in order to implement this and it will be implemented through UNHCRm we will be mobilising some 10,000 euros per resettled person under this scheme".

SOUNDBITE (English), Matthias RUETE, Director General of the Directorate General for Migration and Home Affairs, "I think it took, unfortunately, extremely unhappy and distressful events in April for us to get the political momentum on the level of the heads of state and government, as well on the 23 of April, to mobilise Triton operations. We have extended the geografical area of Triton southwards up to the limits of the Maltese search and rescue region. There are more assets which have been deployed." 

SOUNDBITE (English), Ska KELLER (Greens/EFA, DE), Co-Chairwoman of the Green group, "From my point of view it was quite dissapointing that, on a very symbolic measure where we were all lookinf for 'can the European Union agree on a solidarity mechanism, among member states it was quite dissapointing to see that that was not the case, that solidarity was called for on a voluntary basis, but how voluntary solidarity is suposed to work, I'm not quite sure."

SOUNDBITE (English), Ska KELLER, Co-Chairwoman of the Green group, "The Commission has promised to present a permanent relocation scheme by the end of the year. I'm very much looking forward to that - in that the Parliament will have its normal role as a co-legislator - but I think we should really stress that we want to see that and in case the Commission does not act in due time, that the Parliament is prepared to consider drafting its own legislative own-initiative report".

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), "I don't think this is the right time to start a big discussion on the numbers that are proposed. I think its much more important, much more important than the actual numbers that will be relocated is to have an experiment with the mechanism, see how it works, see how we can do it better and then take this into consideration".

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Kashetu KYENGE (S&amp;D, IT), Rapporteur , "The migration phenomenon isn't just an emergency anymore, it's structural. Therefore, the succesive legal basis under which we should operate should be articles 78.2 and 80."

SOUNDBITE (English), Birgit SIPPEL (S&amp;D, DE), "The number of 40,000 refugees and the number in total we have here is really ridiculous, because many countries have taken more refugees than we in Europe. So, the number of 40,000 not only seems but is a bit ridiculous. On the other hand, to be honest, if we can start with 40,000 and all member states take part, this is good news".

SOUNDBITE (English), Cecilia WIKSTR&#214;M (ALDE, SE), "To tell you the truth, I am a bit fed up. I am so upset to hear that there are member states in this European Union today that are talking about creating, building walls in Europe and making public statements that they are not going to take one single refugee. This is unacceptable if solidarity still will have to mean what it intends to mean".