Meeting of the Committee on Civil Liberties&nbsp;on the draft report on the Dublin reform. Presentation by Cecilia WIKSTR&Ouml;M (ALDE,SE), Rapporteur, in the EP in Brussels. Statements by Claude MORAES (S&amp;D, UK), Chair of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, Cecilia WIKSTR&Ouml;M (ALDE, SE), Alessandra MUSSOLINI (EPP, IT), Elly SCHLEIN (S&amp;D, IT) and Daniel DALTON (ECR, UK).

Brussels

meeting

Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

MORAES, Claude (S&D, UK)

speech

WIKSTRÖM, Cecilia (ALDE, SE)

DALTON, Daniel (ECR, UK)

asylum procedures in the EU (T)

SCHLEIN, Elly (S&D, IT)

MUSSOLINI, Alessandra (EPP, IT)

Presentation of the draft report on the Dublin reform: extracts from the presentation by Cecilia WIKSTRÖM (ALDE,SE), rapporteur

SOUNDBITE (English), Claude MORAES (S&amp;D, UK), Chair of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs , In the reform of the Common asylum System that the Commission presented May last year a proposal to modify Dublin regulation. Before I give the floor to our Rapporteur Cecilia WIKSTROM to present her draft report, I would like to remind colleagues that this is a recast procedure.

SOUNDBITE (English), Cecilia WIKSTR&#214;M (ALDE, SE), The current system causes unreasonable pressure on front-line member states. Its complex rules do incentive applicants to avoid to be registered when they enter into the EU to be underground creating dependencies on smugglers, and it leaves member states not to register potential applicants just because they fear that they will become responsible to access the applications afterwards.

SOUNDBITE (English), Cecilia WIKSTR&#214;M (ALDE, SE), Four points underpins my general philosophy for the report. First of all, every member state has to participate in the system, reception of asylum seeker can not remain responsibility of a handful of the members. Secondly, the proper management of the external border needs to be restored which means that front-line members need to register every person that comes and properly manage and protect the external border of the Union. Third, the secondary movement of applicants needs to stop. We must ensure that there is no free choice of destination for applicants and that the only way to legal status in Europe is to remain within the legal system. [...] And lastly, the system needs to earn the trust of applicants. Better information that is provided at a very early stage, reasonable legal safeguards, protection for minors and vulnerable, and a system that guarantees quick access to a fair asylum procedure.

SOUNDBITE (English), Cecilia WIKSTR&#214;M (ALDE, SE), I am afraid that the Schengen system will not survive if we allow this to continue and this is serious. What we need now is a pragmatic, automatic and binding mechanism to relocate applicants from overburden member states.

SOUNDBITE (English), Cecilia WIKSTR&#214;M (ALDE, SE), We all have responsibilities to try to seek compromises and that is what I am here to do. I therefore propose the introduction of an emergency break that will allow for the suspension of the corrective allocation mechanism for the benefiting member state that will not respect its obligation to manage and protect the external borders and to register the people that arrives into the EURODAC system.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Alessandra MUSSOLINI (EPP, IT), It is quite a decisive text because many of the amendments and the new things that have been put into the text are moving towards greater flexibility of the Dublin system which is been called for by most member states. Going for greater solidarity and greater sense of responsibility which each member state needs to have in such a very delicate situation.

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Elly SCHLEIN (S&amp;D, IT), The genuine problem here is that while we are discussing the Commission proposal the Council is not even looking at it. They are studding solutions to try to avoid any kind of solidarity and to allow them to work within the context of their own interest, and they are also to sideline us as well.

SOUNDBITE (English), Daniel DALTON (ECR, UK), I am disappointed, to say the least, to see the draft Rapport sticks to the Commission proposal on automatic and mandatory distribution of applicant and quotas. From our point of view mandatory relocation is simply unacceptable and unrealistic. This is my first chance to speak on this and I honestly do not know where to start. It is wrong at every level, it is wrong at a subsidiarity level, it is wrong because it treats refugees as commodities, and it is also morally wrong. You can not force member states to take people that they do not want to take.