mr president i would like to thank the rapporteurs for their positive approach on these partial but very long-awaited more positive measures on migration and the position of third-country nationals within the european union
i welcome too the commission's more positive view of certain of parliament's amendments
the starting point for my group the greens has been to have rights which are as equivalent as possible to those of eu nationals a common set of rights and for the system to be as open and as welcoming as possible
i thoroughly agree with members who have said that it is a scandal that eu nationals are not at present treated on an equal basis but i would urge members not to share the cautious approach of our member states in giving our own nationals equal treatment by penalising third-country nationals
there is absolutely no doubt that the eu has a need for workers at a variety of skill levels
we want people who want to come to use and develop their skills from a wide variety of countries india new zealand ghana china wherever and that is why we will not be supporting amendment eighty-four nor indeed amendment twenty-four which talks about granting blue cards only to those highly qualified migrants from countries with which we have previously concluded partnerships
i am not sure what the united states would say about that
it is true that we need to be careful regarding certain sectors in the world's poorest countries but we also need to be careful that these are not the only people who cannot develop their skills in the european union
we also need to take care that we are not using this particular proposal in order to write a general development policy
this is a global proposal
it covers all potential countries in the world
yes we also need to maximise the skills in our own member states and that is why we support the amendment recalling for example the anti-discrimination legislation which we also hope will be ambitious in its next stage
so we will support all amendments which safeguard the rights of individuals and we will vote against those which try to delete those rights
we welcome the efforts to simplify procedures but we too regret that parliament has not been more ambitious especially on the blue card and that it has in fact put further hurdles in the way
so it is unlikely that we will be supporting that proposal as it is although we certainly support the idea in principle
