Family Reunion Rights and Guantanamo Bay

Speech by Sarah Ludford MEP delivered to European Parliament on Wed 3rd Dec 2003

Mr President, the President-in-Office of Council said that the European Union will not fail to give a welcome to legal migrants. This looks hypocritical since the Council agreed a very restrictive text on family reunion rights.

Indeed it is so mean, that the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market advises that the European Parliament should seek the annulment of this text in the European Court on grounds of a breach of the family rights provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights. I welcome that.

The Council has been left in no doubt as to the strength of feeling in this House about the internment without due process of Guantanamo Bay prisoners. As co-rapporteur on this topic, I am helping to prepare a submission from this Parliament to the Supreme Court, but only the Council can make representations on behalf of the EU as a whole. It has already signed a legal cooperation agreement with the US, so the Americans cannot dispute the Council's legal status.

It would be outrageous if governments - such as the UK Government - doing bilateral deals frustrated a Council initiative.

Even if we get Europeans back from Guantanamo Bay, we must speak up for the rest of the 650 detainees. As we are showing on steel tariffs, if the EU punches its weight, the US takes notice.

Related Links:

News story about Guantanamo Bay.

News story about family reunion rights.