EU Parliament endorses compromise package on standards for returning illegally staying third-country nationals

Distribution: immediate - June 18, 2008, 12:19 pm

After almost three years of long, complicated and tough negotiations with Council, the European Parliament now endorsed the compromise package establishing EU-wide rules on how to return illegally staying third country nationals in a fair and transparent procedure. The compromise package promotes the principle of voluntary return and provides for a minimum but comprehensive set of procedural safeguards. It also limits the use of coercive measures and set standards for use of the re-entry ban as well as of detention.

ALDE-spokesperson on migration Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert (VVD, Netherlands) supported the deal that was agreed upon a few weeks ago by the Slovenian presidency and a majority of the parliamentary political groups' spokespersons: "The return policy cannot be looked upon in an isolated way. It should be seen as an integral and necessary part of a total package on migration, including legal as well as asylum. If we want to push Europe's forward-looking strategy on legal migration, we simply need an effective, though fair and transparent, return policy."

"It is high time to take up our responsibility and to introduce common minimum standards on a European level. Guidelines of the Council of Europe are now made legally binding for all Member States."

"Community Control mechanisms, such as infringement procedures, competence of the European Court of Justice, Commission reporting and EP monitoring, will become available. Furthermore it should be crystal clear that this compromise package puts in place rules where none exist at present. Member States with more favourable conditions in place should maintain these. On the insistence of Parliament, we also secured a political commitment from Council that this Directive will not and cannot be used as an excuse to lower existing standards."

ALDE-Group Leader Graham Watson adds: "We are moving towards a European migration policy at a quicker pace. Just a day after the European Commission presented its asylum plan and stepped up the search for a common approach to immigration, there is agreement on the handling of illegal non-EU citizens. I hope that our commitment to a human, efficient and sustainable management of migration will be taken on by the French presidency and put into action."

Chairman of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Gérard Deprez (MR, Belgium) concludes: "Today the realists have won the vote over the idealists. Of course we also would have liked to see a directive that would set higher common standards. But political reality shows that by amending this directive we would have ended up with nothing at all. It would have given the Member States the possibility to bury the directive. Illegal migrants would have been the victims of good intentions."



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For more information, please contact:
Neil Corlett: +33-3-88 17 41 67 or +32-478-78 22 84
e-mail: neil.corlett@europarl.europa.eu
Jeroen Reijnen: +33-3-88 17 42 75 or +32-473-39 47 10