Statement by Ska KELLER, Co-Chair of the Greens-EFA Group, on the European Council, in Brussels.

Brussels

statement

KELLER, Ska (Greens/EFA, DE)

meeting of the European Council

European Council meeting 15 December 2016 (T)

European Council: statement by Ska KELLER (Greens/EFA, DE)

SOUNDBITE (English), Ska KELLER (Greens/EFA, DE), Co-Chair of the Greens-EFA Group, What we Greens would like to see is first of all that on Migration, one of the top topics on the agenda, the member states deliver on the promises already made. For example on relocation; 160.000 refugees were supposed to be transferred from Greece and Italy to other European member states and of those, not even 10.000 people have been actually relocated. THis is a scandal, a real disaster, here we see that solidarity is not happening. Instead the member states are talking about cooperating with all sorts of different countries elsewhere in the world, it doesn&rsquo;t matter what the situation is there, who governs there&hellip; as long as they keep migrants and refugees away from the EU. We think this is not acceptable, this is also giving a horrible picture of the way how we as EU value our own principles and human rights, internally. And if we are not true to our values internally, how are we supposed to defend them credibly to the outside.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ska KELLER (Greens/EFA, DE), Co-Chair of the Greens-EFA Group, We Greens have supported the resolution of the EP which says that we should freeze the negotiations (with Turkey) but freeze doesn&rsquo;t mean suspend or terminate, and the EP resolution also says that we need to continue political dialogue and this is what we as Green Group do; for example we went to Turkey right after the adoption of the resolution and we talked to all political parties and also with civil society organisations, journalists&hellip; with so many people which are under such pressure. But anyway I think that negotiations are not our toughest tool, because the accession process has been weakened in the past, unfortunately also by Member States which were saying that no matter what happens we are not going to accept an accession. But there is other things, for example the customs union is currently being negotiated to enlarge it and we think this is not the time to talk businesses; we want to have a political dialogue but we don&rsquo;t want to talk about the profits of big companies which are also often, not always, a key peeling. So let&rsquo;s not have this enlargement of the customs union right now and here the Parliament also has a role because without us the enlargement cannot happen. 