Debates

Wednesday, 23 November 2022 - Strasbourg

The need for a European solution on asylum and migration including search and rescue (debate)

  Sophia in ‘t Veld (Renew). – Mr President, colleagues, the joint Parliament and Council roadmap gives reason for cautious optimism. It gives us a chance to move forward together. And this Parliament, as always, will do everything within its power to deliver before the end of term. But it can only fly if the Council takes its responsibility and agrees on an instrument for a truly common European policy.

But colleagues it’s not only about policies, it’s also about language. Can we please, when we talk about migration, have a bit more temperate and less apocalyptic language, because xenophobic rhetoric has not brought the solution any closer. Dehumanising migrants has done nothing to deflect migration flows. It has mainly served to sow division in society and it has created tragedies unworthy of our common values.

Migration has always existed and it will always exist, and there is a degree of irony in this debate because many of us here in this room, and other colleagues who are elsewhere in the building, have a family history of migration. Their parents or grandparents migrated within, to or from Europe. Let’s keep that in mind.

The Ukraine refugee crisis has shown that Europe is capable of managing big challenges. So let’s draw the lessons from that. Be pragmatic. Adopt real solutions. Because Europe can do it.