Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, addresses the Plenary and debate with political groups’ speakers at the start of the plenary session of the European Parliament in Brussels.

debate

plenary session

migration and refugees in Europe (T)

formal sitting

GRANDI, Filippo (IT)

Address by Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees: extracts from the debate

Title: Address by Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, The UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration have appealed for an urgent resolution of the situation at the border between Belarus and Poland and for immediate, unhindered access to people on the move to ensure provision of humanitarian assistance, identification of those in need of protection and access to proceed to procedures in Belarus for those there who wish to seek asylum.

SOUNDBITE (English), Filippo GRANDI, UN High Commissioner for refugees, But looking at the broader picture in Europe, these challenges simply do not justify the knee jerk reaction we have seen in some places. The irresponsible, xenophobic discourse, the walls and barbed wire, the violent pushbacks that include the beating of refugees and migrants, sometimes stripping them naked and dumping them in rivers or leaving them to drown in seas.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), Europe has helped. We must not forget that more than five million refugees have found protection in the European Union in recent years. Hundreds of thousands of asylum procedures are currently still ongoing, and billions of euros have been invested in order to help countries in the region accommodate and protect vulnerable people.

SOUNDBITE (English), Jeroen LENAERS (EPP, NL), We need a real European policy that allows us to defend our borders and our values, to screen the people that arrive and quickly distinguish between those in need of international protection and those who are not to effectively return, those who are not.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Simona BONAF&#200; (S&amp;D, IT), And we see a further illustration on the border of Belarus and Poland. Asylum and migration should be a shared responsibility of the European Union. But far too often we are leaving countries on their own to tackle migratory flows. And despite situations of emergency, which have arisen far too often in Europe, we are far too slow to give a response commensurate with the level of challenge.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN &apos;T VELD (Renew, NL), And today we are fortunately the most prosperous, safe and free continent in the world.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN &apos;T VELD (Renew, NL), Instead of helping refugees, we are busy turning Europe into a gated community.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN &apos;T VELD (Renew, NL), If I hear the President of the European Council say yes, sure, Europe too can pay for building a wall on the borders of Europe. It becomes, as we say in Dutch, I get a cold heart. I find it frightening.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sophia IN &apos;T VELD (Renew, NL), We are four hundred and fifty million citizens. We can handle this. But there is one condition, and that is that we speak with one voice. Now, here we get to the European Council. Twenty seven government leaders or they call themselves leaders. But for years now, they refuse to agree together on the common asylum policy. But they very readily agree with Mr. Erdogan or well, maybe not this Mr. Lukashenko, but we're paying Libyan militias to do our dirty work. The twenty seven should finally take their responsibility and agree on a common European asylum and migration policy.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ska KELLER (Greens/EFA, DE), In the EU of today refugees are being pushed back at borders, beaten by police officers, abandoned at sea by border guards in the EU. Calls for help at sea are being ignored by rescue coordination centers in the EU, refugees are being dumped into overcrowded camps that are flooded by rains or left homeless. We send soldiers. We sent dogs. We sent barbed wire against women, children and men, against people like you and me. Is that how we want to be? And dictators around the world have realized that the worst thing they can do to us to pressure the EU is to send people.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ska KELLER (Greens/EFA, DE), Are we so helpless that we see those children freezing and Polish as weapons? Are we so frightened of them? Is that who we want to be?

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Nicola PROCACCINI (ECR, IT), I am firmly opposed to those who would like to open the borders in an indiscriminate fashion. The borders of Europe, and allow anybody. And we are absolutely firm and resolute about this. We will not allow the traffickers to exploit migrants to destabilize our countries.

SOUNDBITE (English), Malin BJ&#214;RK (The Left, SE), We see illegal pushbacks, violence, brutality in Greece, in Croatia and now at the Belarus Polish border. We see that organizations that try to protect and assist refugees are being persecuted in Europe.