Text tabled : A7-0063/2012

  Sergio Paolo Francesco Silvestris (PPE), in writing. – (IT) I voted in favour of the report on the European Refugee Fund this morning because I believe this fund provides essential support for the Member States that are subject to particularly intense migratory pressures, such as Italy, Malta and the southern European countries in general. In line with the Hague Programme’s objective of setting up a common European asylum system, this fund has the noble aim of financing capacity-building projects to create durable reception conditions for beneficiaries. Unlike other funds, the European Refugee Fund has already gone through two previous phases, with ERF I from 2001 to 2004 and ERF II from 2005 to 2007. I hope, therefore, that approval of the new fund for 2008-2013 will impart further momentum to the objective of establishing a common asylum system – one that is based on the principle of equality of treatment, so as to provide persons genuinely in need with a high degree of protection under the same conditions in all Member States.