During the plenary session of the European Parliament in Brussels (17-20 May 2021), MEPs debate on the New Avenues for Legal Labour Migration: opening statement by Sylvie GUILLAUME (S&D, FR), rapporteur and by Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of promoting our European Way of Life. This transcription speech is the result of an automatic process. Check against delivery.

Brussels

statement

debate

plenary session

GUILLAUME, Sylvie (S&D, FR)

legal migration (T)

SCHINAS, Margaritis (EPP-DE, EL, EC)

New Avenues for Legal Labour Migration: opening statement by Sylvie GUILLAUME (S&D, FR), rapporteur and by Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission

SOUNDBITE (French), Sylvie GUILLAUME (S&amp;D, FR), Rapporteur, I'd like to start by thanking various people, first of all, Mary Bali, who started this report before going back to Malta, which meant that I could take it over, but also like to thank the shadow rapporteur here who helped me with this work, most of this help from a distance. I'd like to thank LIBE and those members of my group who helped me very much indeed.

SOUNDBITE (French), Sylvie GUILLAUME (S&D, FR), Rapporteur, And if I may particularly thank my assistant, Diane, who has just given birth to Joseph earlier than planned and was therefore not able to be here today. I'd like to thank all these people, but I'd like to be a bit cautious as well. This is one of the most difficult subjects. Some people will say that they do you like the opinion but it doesn't go too far, whereas other people will say that I'm naive or criminal or crazy or perhaps all three.

SOUNDBITE (French), Sylvie GUILLAUME (S&D, FR), Rapporteur, Crazy because the economic situation in Europe mean that we should triple lock our borders and naive because I'm not seeing that there are hordes ready to in to invade us and that I'm not taking account of the brain drain. A lot of hope. A lot of people will come with positive comments on this proposal. I would ask them to defend another way of looking at immigration so that immigration is not always seen as a problem.

SOUNDBITE (French), Sylvie GUILLAUME (S&D, FR), Rapporteur, As economic and social committee says, we should also talk about mutual enrichment and that the positive influence of immigration without rather than always getting into xenophobic territory, we're looking at legal avenues for legal labour migration. So far, we've had very little positive debate about immigration, for example, the long term residence on the blue card legislation, which has just had a good epilogue.

SOUNDBITE (French), Sylvie GUILLAUME (S&D, FR), Rapporteur, After many years being blocked, researches and studies students, rather, are spared, but would be looking at, for example, family unification in the medium term. Quite often we've had some very violent reactions and the EU has tried to look at the results rather than the cause. And nobody's really said that the less legal avenues of immigration have, the more illegal avenues you will have.

SOUNDBITE (French), Sylvie GUILLAUME (S&D, FR), Rapporteur, The proposal from the Commission is too weak on an illegal labour migration, although it is a reality. We have an ageing population in our continent. Germany, Spain and Italy are in critical situation when it comes to the ageing population. And if you look at the balance between active and non-active people. And the idea is that immigrants come in to replace Europe's no, I leave that up to certain tortured brains.

SOUNDBITE (French), Sylvie GUILLAUME (S&D, FR), Rapporteur, Obviously, it's not a matter of replacing Europeans, whether they're active or not, by. Migrants, the idea is, of course, that these migrants will be active in Macron if we look at how certain professions are calling out for more people for decades, we have problems, for example, in hotels, catering and seasonal work.

SOUNDBITE (French), Sylvie GUILLAUME (S&D, FR), Rapporteur, I participated some time ago in a meeting with French Chamber of Commerce, which really took the bull by the horns and said they really had to ask for people to come in from outside because they couldn't get workers locally throughout the Covid 19 epidemic. A lot of frontline workers in the helthcare sector were immigrants, and how would we have been able to face up to this crisis without them since 2005?

SOUNDBITE (French), Sylvie GUILLAUME (S&D, FR), Rapporteur, There was an idea of in Italy to send home all the people who look after old people, but that was turned around. Now we have a regular immigration and a lot of people are dying because of this. And we have more and more criminals working in this sector. The more we can ensure that people have a decent income and are properly integrated, the better it is.

SOUNDBITE (French), Sylvie GUILLAUME (S&D, FR), Rapporteur, There is a lot of for lack of consistency in the approach we have at the moment. We need to to simplify and we need to harmonise current legislation amongst the proposals made. I would like to focus on the idea of establishing a link between employers and workers through a platform which would set out what the needs are in all the sectors and the associations and which cover as wide an area as possible.

SOUNDBITE (French), Sylvie GUILLAUME (S&D, FR), Rapporteur, So we would appeal to the Commission to react and promote new legislation to have adapted tools through legal immigration channels and not lose sight of unskilled jobs. I would call on full lucidity and I would ask everybody to look at the Win-Win situation.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, Thank you, Madam President, honourable members. I welcome today's debate on legal migration, I'd like to begin by thanking Madame Guillaume for her work report that would follow by Mrs Also Hanis report to come later on the legislative initiative report on the same subject. And I particularly welcome that this report is called Avenues for Legal Migration, because the question is not yes or no to migration.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, The question is how to make migration a successful experience. Most of us participating here in this debate are ourselves migrants. I have myself both my grandparents have been migrants in some stage of their lives, and most of us working here have left our home places to find new opportunities abroad. Many of us leave, meet and work with partners, friends and colleagues from different countries, other nationalities in our daily lives.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, Migration and mobility is part of the European way of life, and migration can and should be a success story in Europe. We just need to have the right framework to ensure that it works for people embarking on it, as well as for both sending and hosting countries. This is in essence what legal migration policy is all about. The vast majority of migrants arrive in Europe legally.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, In 2019, our member states issued more than three million first residence permits to third-country nationals, of which over one million were for employment purposes. With a pandemic, the contribution of migrants to the European economies, labour markets and public services have become all the more evidence, many of them front line workers.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, Front line heroes in this European struggle contributed in a crucial way to making it possible for all of us to get through the crisis and address economic and social needs, in particular health care, food and agriculture. For example, in the EU, 25 percent of the workers in the personal care and food preparation sectors are non EU born.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, As we all know, legal migration is a shared competence between the EU and our member states, it is member states' national competence to decide on the number of workers to be admitted in their own labour markets. But at EU level, we can support this by developing harmonised rules on the admission and on the rights of workers from third countries.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, And as you know, we have already done that for highly qualified workers through the Blue Card Directive, seasonal workers and intra corporate transferees. Legal migration is an essential component of the pact on migration and asylum, and it is part of the comprehensive external dimension of migration, allowing for the development of made and mutually beneficial migration partnerships with key countries of origin and transit.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, The next steps on EU legal migration policy will also need to take into account all these lessons and the impact of the pandemic. In the short term, the travel restrictions imposed by all EU countries have implied the temporary closure of most labour migration channels and the administrative capacity of national migration and consular authorities have also been severely affected.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, We have also experienced in the EU higher unemployment rates and the lower labour demand in these sectors most affected by the covid-19 crisis. Now that our vaccination strategy is well on track and as we are working towards a recovery of our economy now, we need to think strategically about the contribution that labour migration can leave and give to this process. We all know that Europe is an ageing continent.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, We all know that in many economic sectors and regions that are structural labour shortages that cannot be filled by the domestic labour force or through a drive to mobility. We also know that the ongoing digital and green transformations require new skill sets, innovation and the specialised labour force. And this is where labour migration can play an important role. We are now losing the global race for attracting skills and talents that are needed for our competitiveness.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, That's why it is so crucial to get this right. Only one in four highly educated migrants residing in a non OECD country chooses an EU destination. One in four, while almost two or three, rather, choose to settle in North America or Oceania. So this is a compelling factor to act, and to act now. Let me please express, publicly, my gratitude to the European Parliament for succeeding in reaching an important, emblematic political agreement on the blue card directive last Monday.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, Well done, Javier. The new scheme will introduce efficient rules for attracting highly skilled workers to the EU, including more flexible admission of conditions, enhanced rights and the possibility to move and work easily between our member states. Adopting the blue card is a central objective of the new pact, and with this agreement we send a strong signal about our collective ability to agree on key migration files and equip ourselves with a future proof migration system.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, But of course, legal migration is not only about highly skilled workers. I fully agree that we also need labour migrants in low and medium skilled sectors because our economies depend on those and the full rates of professional chains and the skills that they need to support them.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, In the short term, I want to start by presenting quickly the main proposals on legal immigration that we have in the pipeline in the Commission. By the end of this year, as we announced in the pact, we shall present a skills and talent package. The aim will be to address the main shortcomings in the current legislation, as demonstrated by our comprehensive evaluation of two years ago, the fitness track on legal migration and the public consultation conducted recently.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, Firstly, as I remember very well, that I promised during my hearing before this House, we will propose a revision of the directive on long term residents to improve the rights and the you mobility of those migrants who are already well integrated in our societies. We will also propose a review of the single permit directive to achieve its full potential of making the admission of low and medium skilled workers easier for employers and migration authorities.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, Finally, we will also set out the options to develop an EU talent pool, which will be an EU wide platform for international recruitment that would help match the skills of migrant workers with the need of EU employers. EU employers often do not consider using international recruitment to be able to meet skills, needs and international matching. Longer migration and market based procedures are often a barrier.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, Added to this is the lack of transparency, and it's costly for especially small and medium enterprises. So we need to tackle this challenge with an EU wide tool. I'm aware that this is a sensitive area where there are very different views on the development of this legislation in certain member states in particular. We saw that also in the negotiations with the Blue Card Directive.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, But I believe that these future initiatives are necessary, proportionate and targeted and will help and will help us improve the current legal and policy framework. Let me finish by offering a look at the long term and HERA. I would welcome a more forward looking suggestions of your report beyond the legislative changes.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, There are other things that can be done to foster legal pathways to the EU. I have already mentioned the talent pool, but another important initiative is the development of talent partnerships with partner countries. Here, the aim would be to provide a framework to mobilise EU and member states' tools for cooperation with partner countries on legal migration and mobility, building on and scaling up some pilot projects that we have already developed in the last years.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, It is now time to draw on this experience and be mutually beneficial. Win win partnerships with countries of origin on migration. The Commission will provide political, financial and operational support and I want to put together a robust and impactful EU offer for these talent partnerships.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, Talent partnerships will be launched in a high political level virtual conference on 11th of June, and I would be very pleased to have the chair of LIBE Mr López Aguilar, representing the Parliament on that occasion. And I count on your success, on your contribution to this important project.

SOUNDBITE (English), Margaritis SCHINAS, Vice-President of the European Commission, I'm looking forward to working with the European Parliament in the months to come and further discussing your input and suggestions on the way forward. Thank you again. And well done by Deputy Jonquiere.