Cecilia Wikström (ALDE). – Madam President, migration and the need for reform of the Common European Asylum System was discussed last week in Council. This was very timely, to say the least, not least since the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs adopted, on Thursday, with a very large majority, our position on the necessary reform of the Dublin Regulation.

I have managed to gather behind me and to unite this House in a very bold proposal, creating a truly European Asylum System, and we have managed to do so through long negotiations and by listening to each other.

Now I think it is high time that you, in Council, do exactly the same: listen to each other and start paying respect to each other, leaving national egoism behind. This belongs to history and not to the current situation in Europe. We can never create a functioning Common European Asylum System as long as every Member State is obsessed with their own national situation.

We now need to create a fair system that works for all of Europe, with all its Member States. And such a system has to include automatic relocation of asylum-seekers and must be based on the principle of solidarity, as in Article 80 of our Treaties. The goal has to be to fix the asylum system, not merely to find some watered-down compromise that can reach unanimity in Council.

It is high time that you take a qualified majority vote on this, because otherwise we will never change reality. I welcome that Council has signalled that it will continue working on this and set the goal of reaching a mandate before the spring. Negotiations in trilogues will be long and difficult, but I look forward to opening those trilogues sooner rather than later.

The European Parliament has delivered, and it is now high time that you do the same. We owe it to the citizens of Europe who expect this from us.