Joint mission to Sicily of the Committee on Budgets and the Committee Civil Liberties, Justice and Homes Affairs to examine how resources from the EU budget are spent to manage migration and refugee flows, as well as the system for reception, identification and retention of migrants. Statements by Kashetu KYENGE (S&amp;D, IT) and&nbsp;Giovanni LA VIA (EPP, IT).

visit

Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

migration and refugees in Europe (T)

EP delegation

Italy

Committee on Budgets

KYENGE, Cécile Kashetu (S&D, IT)

LA VIA, Giovanni (EPP, IT)

Sicily

Joint BUDG - LIBE mission to Sicily: visit of the Centro di Primo Soccorso ed Accoglienza of Pozzallo, meeting with Luigi AMMATUNATHE, Mayor of Pozzallo

Visit of the Centro di Primo Soccorso ed Accoglienza of Pozzallo, including meeting with the mayor of Pozzallo, Mr Luigi Ammatuna

MEP delegation inside the centre. (4 shots)

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Kashetu KYENGE (S&amp;D, IT), "This is one of the examples that show how the funds are used on the ground. It also gave an idea to our colleagues, those who have never been able to see this because they come from another reality, and the possibility for them to understand what is happening concretely, as they represent the European institution and will have to legislate on the issue."

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Giovanni LA VIA (EPP, IT), "We saw many useful things today, we saw how the process of identification works, what sanitary screening are done, what are the issues that come up between the different cultures. We gathered that many things are working. Some others can be improved and above all the forecast on flows of people arriving. For many days, when the weather is not nice, very few people arrive, the centre is empty. When the nice weather arrives, the wind from the south, many little boats begin their journeys, they are then picked up in the Mediterranean sea, sometimes a big ship helps them all at the same time and brings back in one day 1000 people. It then becomes difficult to identify everybody at once, it is difficult to offer all services to everyone and it is not possible to guarantee the level of assistance that these people deserve."

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Giovanni LA VIA (EPP, IT), "When talking about redistribution we have seen a lot of selfishness coming from European countries. We have seen that when talking about thirty or thirty five thousand refugees to redistribute among European counties we haven't reached a conclusion after discussing for 3 months. On the other end you have Italy that greeted all of those thirty, thirty five thousand people in the country. Europe should have this on their conscience because this has to be considered a European problem. We cannot keep on considering Italy as the border of Europe without having Europe take responsibility for being the border in the Mediterranean sea".

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Kashetu KYENGE (S&amp;D, IT), "I believe one aspect that we should insist on is that when funds are allocated by the European Union there are costs that are not included in those budgets. European resources should help void difficulties that encounter the single member states. We are here to verify how the resources are used on the ground. Such a visit gives us an idea of what can be proposed to allocate resources to member states in the future."