Claude Moraes (S&D). – Madam President, I think my colleagues from the S&D Group, Mr Cercas and Mrs Blinkevičiūtė, both referred to the central problem for our group in this package: it is not just about equal treatment or the country-of-origin principle – as Mrs Oomen-Ruijten said, that has been debated very extensively. There is also the question of the illogicality of where we are today. We have a single permit proposal which comes after the skilled workers proposal, the blue card, and comes after sanctions on employers. That means we have a package which has many of the correct intentions, such as having a horizontal approach. However, we are not having a horizontal approach because we are in a situation where Mrs Mathieu is doing a good job with what she has but, as she said in her speech, we wanted a global approach but we now have a sectoral approach, and that sectoral approach is exactly what Mrs Lambert was concerned about.

So where are we today? Our group has deep concerns in the employment sphere on the country-of-origin principle and, as my colleague Mrs Blinkevičiūtė said, we have a real problem with the categories of workers who are included in this proposal. So we have a situation where posted workers, intra-corporate transferees, seasonal workers and – yes – beneficiaries of international protection are all excluded. We will present these amendments again tomorrow on behalf of our group.

If you have a single permit which does not do what it says on the tin – i.e. it does not have a reasonably broad-based approach to entry for third-country nationals to the European Union – you will face problems of equal treatment, of a two-tier work force and other problems that we want to solve with common policies.

On the other hand, we in the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs in particular appreciate that the sectoral approach is the approach we have to work with, so there will be directives on seasonal workers and intra-corporate transferees, but you cannot blame our group, which has equal treatment on the country-of-origin principle at the heart of its activities in trying to resolve these matters. We are telling the truth, which is that we are doing things in the wrong way and we are doing it because of the people who are not present today to listen to our arguments: the representatives of the Council. The Council did not want to deal with this in a horizontal way and we are left with this kind of piecemeal approach.

So on the single permit, we understand the good intentions and the global approach and the work of the rapporteur in trying to make this work, but we will present our amendments tomorrow in good faith in the hope that we can obtain a single permit which says what it is: a single permit covering the broad range of people who seek to work in this European Union. We want to make it a realistic single permit that will really work for all Member States and will stand the test of time.