Speech by the President of the Parliamentary Assembly at the opening of the third part-session
(Strasbourg, 24 June 2002)

The Heads of State and Government of the European Union have ended their summit in Seville without any significant progress on preparing for enlargement. Less than a year from the expected signing of accession agreements with up to ten new member states, key issues such as agricultural subsidies remain unresolved. This is not reassuring. Perhaps they could have done more if they spent more time on it. But they did not. The Summit in Seville was largely devoted to the fight against illegal immigration. It ended up with a package of hastily reached compromises between those who required tougher measures and others who insisted on a more humane approach. To some extent this is a relief. The EU will not, at least for the time being, sanction the countries of origin that fail to cooperate on measures to curb illegal immigration. The joint action plan against illegal immigration includes several measures that indeed make sense, such as the unification of procedures for handling asylum applications, and insistence on a common overall strategy on immigration. At the end of the day, what is the problem is not so much the content of the decisions, but the way they came about. The way the EU leaders handle the issue of immigration is not without an impact on public views and attitudes on this subject, and the summit in Seville was perhaps a missed opportunity to influence the public opinion in a positive way.

I decided to speak openly on this subject, for several reasons. The EU leaders were right on the target when they said that immigration requires a common approach. But this approach must be found at the European, and not only European Union level. If the EU adopts a more restricted policy, this will only shift the problems to their neighbouring countries. As the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe I also feel obliged to express concern with regard to measures, or attitudes, which risk creating new obstacles to contacts, co-operation and exchange within the Council of Europe area. Finally, as a representative of an organisation mandated to protect human rights and uphold the rule of law, including the international law, I must react to the fact that the hardening approach of European governments to immigration tends to ignore the basic international humanitarian and human rights conventions. We cannot afford to throw the Geneva conventions out of the window for the sake of electoral opportunism.

The Seville summit is the most recent example of a growing trend across Europe. The fight against immigration and insecurity has become the most important single issue in political debates and electoral campaigns in many of our member states. It is perhaps time to pause and take a moment to think about where all this is going. It is time to ask some harsh questions.

Has illegal immigration really reached such dramatic proportions, or are we dealing with an issue that has been exaggerated and blown out of proportion?

Are politicians, from all parts of the political spectrum, spending so much time and energy on this issue because we genuinely believe this is the right thing to do, or are we just panicking and trying to steal the show from populist following their electoral gains in several European countries? Are we really responding to the genuine concerns of our citizens, or are we in fact responding to tabloid-driven sentiment, maliciously interpreted by the extreme right to serve their own political agenda?

Will a watered-down version of extremist anti-immigration paranoia really help us to buck the electoral trend, or are we allowing ourselves to fall naively into their trap?

Finally, how far are we ready to go in an ill-fated attempt to gain a few votes, at the cost of compromising the human rights and humanist values on which we have constructed Europe over the past fifty years?

As I said before, these are harsh questions, but it is high time we asked them, and high time we answered them honestly.

There is no doubt that illegal immigration is a challenge. Europe's capacity to absorb new immigrants is not limitless. We must find ways to regulate and limit the influx of people, perhaps through quotas or other measures, but certainly through a common European approach and in close co-operation with the countries of origin. Regulating immigration is a challenge that can be met without compromising our most fundamental values of human rights and human dignity, and without causing more damage than good; both for immigrants and for the countries they seek to enter.

Meeting the challenge of immigration, including clandestine immigration, is not an easy task, but it would help if we begin by setting the record straight on several key aspects.

Firstly, people have always fled misery and persecution, and they always will. There are no walls that can stop those trying to escape from hunger and despair. Europeans should be the first to understand this simple truth. We have learned it in the most tragic circumstances, over and over again, throughout our history.

Secondly, numbers of illegal immigrants in Europe are on the decline. That extremists are ignoring, or even blatantly lying about this fact is not surprising, but why governments are not making a greater effort to provide objective information to their own citizens is more difficult to understand.

Thirdly, immigrant communities in our countries are net contributors to our budgets. It is true that immigrants receive a proportionally higher share of social benefits - simply because a proportionally higher share of them is at the bottom of the social ladder - but the money handed out to the least privileged is more than compensated for by the money paid in taxes by the majority of immigrants who have found work and provide for themselves and their families.

Fourthly, Europe's population is ageing fast, and a continuous flow of immigrants is one of the best guarantees that, a few decades from now, there will be enough people of working age around to pay the pensions of the retired.

Fifthly, whole sections of our economies - from tourism to construction, health care and beyond, without even mentioning football - depend heavily on an immigrant work force. Economically and demographically speaking, of all possible future scenarios concerning immigration, the most harmful one would be if they would stop coming.

But there are other aspects of this pressing problem which go beyond economics. Immigrants, whether seeking refuge for political reasons or simply trying to escape poverty, are first and foremost human beings. Very few are embarking on the perilous road to exile in search of luxury. Behind every face we see on our TV screens, on the beaches of Spain and southern Italy, in the asylum centres of France or on the crowded boats barely afloat along the Turkish coast, there is a human story, often a tragic one. We should never forget that simple truth. We may not be able to provide for every one of them, but we should never stop caring for them and doing what we can to help them. This is about our own human dignity as much as it is about theirs.

Instead of engaging in a sotto voce version of extremist rhetoric, we should be focussing on the fight against criminals who are exploiting human misery, robbing clandestine migrants of their life savings and exposing them to tremendous risks.

We should also be focussing on countries of origin, targeting them not with sanctions but with development aid, helping them to improve the living conditions which are currently causing so many people to leave and seek a better life elsewhere.

We need to work harder and spend more time, energy and resources on integrating newcomers into our societies. We need to give them an opportunity to contribute, and to feel at home.

Our welfare cannot be protected by walls. In the long term, it can only survive and flourish if living conditions are improved throughout the world. Our planet is too small to allow extremes of wealth and poverty to co-exist side by side. Instead of trying to keep people away, we should be striving to create a world in which people will be able to settle abroad or stay at home, as they choose. A world in which people will be able travel freely, and no longer need to flee.