Damien CARÊME

Policy topics Damien CARÊME is active on

What Damien CARÊME has said (7)

• 2025-11-03 “E-004304/2025 Answer given by Mr McGrath on behalf of the European Commission The Commission has followed the developments that led to the adoption of Hungarian Law on the Protection of Local Identity. It is currently assessing this legislation as well as the adoption by local communities of acts implementing these legal protection instruments on their possible impacts and implications on different areas of EU law. Given the many areas of EU law involved, this analysis is complex and requires time. The Commission will remain extremely vigilant on the possible impacts on fundamental freedoms and possible discrimination against Roma.”
  EU policy on integration and ethnic, racial and religious discrimination · Engagement of Romani communities in Europe
• 2025-07-17 “E-002974/2025 Answer given by Mr McGrath on behalf of the European Commission The Commission is aware of the situation with regard to evictions of Roma people in Sofia’s Ilinden district. Member States must respect EU law, namely the Racial Equality Directive 1 , which prohibits discrimination in the field of housing on grounds of racial or ethnic origin. Regarding the EU funds, the Member States are required to fulfil enabling conditions under the Common Provisions Regulation 2 , including the horizontal enabling condition on the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. While no complaints concerning the evictions of Roma people have so far been reported to the relevant Monitoring Committee, the Committee regularly examines the fulfilment of enabling conditions and their application throughout the programming period, including reporting on the receipt of any cases of non-compliance and complaints regarding the Charter. The Commission will consider all the steps necessary to safeguard EU law, as appropriate. 1 Council Directive 2000/43/EC. 2 Regulation (EU) 2021/1060.”
  Engagement of Romani communities in Europe · EU policy on integration and ethnic, racial and religious discrimination
• 2025-03-26 “E-001271/2025 Answer given by Mr McGrath on behalf of the European Commission Directive (EU) 2016/343 1 requires Member States to take appropriate measures to ensure that suspects and accused persons are not presented as being guilty, in court or in public, through the use of measures of physical restraint, unless those measures are required for case-specific reasons. It is the Commission’s priority to ensure that Member States fully and correctly transpose directives in their national legal system. If conformity issues arise, other than those identified in the pending infringement proceedings for incorrect transposition of Directive (EU) 2016/343 against Hungary 2 , the Commission will take every appropriate measure to ensure compliance with the Directive. It should be noted that the minimum standards as laid down in the Recommendation on the procedural rights of suspects and accused in pre-trial detention and on material detention conditions 3 are not legally binding on the Member States. However, they will serve as a reference point to improve the situation in prisons within the EU. The Commission will monitor and assess the measures taken by Member States in view of the Recommendation and aims to submit a report in the course of 2025. Moreover, all EU Member States have committed themselves to respecting the standards on this matter drafted by the Council of Europe, such as the 2006 European Prison Rules. Prison conditions are closely monitored by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment as set up by the Council of Europe. 1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2016/343/oj/eng. 2 INFR(2023)2141: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/inf_23_5380. 3 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reco/2023/681/oj/eng.”
  Rule of law in Hungary · EU law enforcement cooperation in criminal matters
• “Just a few remarks. I'd like to thank very much the rapporteur for this draft report, which is an excellent basis for our work. Amending the 2021 Council decision is timely because, indeed, the international situation has undergone huge upheaval. The economic and social situation of the majority of O. S unfortunately, remains alarming. The current geopolitical instability has placed these territories back, front and center in our discussions, and this must mean a profound paradigm shift in our partnership relations, which must be more to their benefit and no longer solely for ours. We cannot pretend that we stand by their side in the face of the greed of other international actors, and then take advantage of them. New Caledonia, for example, is going through a profound economic and social crisis and experiencing near collapse of its economy. Gdp fell by 22.5%. Some 11,015 thousand jobs were lost and there was significant demographic exodus. The territory knows a poverty rate that is 2.5 times more than that of mainland France. Unemployment is structurally high. A difficult economic situation that exists is also coupled with the fact that deep inequalities exist. The median standard of living of connects is twice as low as that of non connects.”
  EU cohesion/structural-fund architecture: consolidation vs ring-fenced separate funds
• “Yes. Thank you for the interesting presentations, which nevertheless prove something is that we have remembered nothing of previous crises, be it Covid 19 or the war in Ukraine. Back then, we wondered about Europe's food independence and its food strategy. And yet there are solutions. We know them about them. They take time to implement, but they would not only contribute to food sovereignty but also to fighting climate change. These were only mentioned in a single presentation, the very last slide of the specialist who joined us remotely, which is agroecology. This could help us break away from fertilisers and synthetic entrance, as we saw with Ukrainian wheat, for example, not to mention fertilisers. I think European agriculture needs to get out of this hole and really challenge our agricultural models now, and not just in a few years, as suggested in the slide. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kerem.”
  Use of fertilisers
• “Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Now, as a member of the committee and president of the intergroup of Anti-Racism, Racism and Diversity group, with Mrs. And I'm very worried about the fact that Eleanor, which is a civil society organisation, which is an anti-racist organisation, I'm rather perturbed that they were not included in this program. Uh, the commission statement, uh, about Eleanor are not founded because they're based on untrue statements. And Eleanor has been fighting the, uh, fighting racism. It's an organization bringing more than 150 organizations together, and they're capable of discussing European anti-racism strategies as well as other strategies. We should invite Eleanor to this exchange of views, as Julie proposed. There are increasing attacks as the, uh, representative of Amnesty International. Uh, there's attacks on these organizations from the right and the far right. It's not enough to recognize the structural nature of racism and take very weak measures to fight serious racism. We must guarantee anti-racist guarantees in every area. The respect of fundamental rights of all must be a condition for any financing, any funding. And then we should have an efficient sanctioning system. The Commission has succeeded in putting racist statements in our law, basing it on the maintenance of public order. There are borders, and many people at our borders of the EU have been treated brutally and lost their lives because of their skin colour, their supposed origin or religion. The events that took place in Bulgaria, Greece and Spain confirm that what we've been fearing is turning into fact. Discrimination and hate speech based on racism is getting worse throughout Europe and is not being combated because there's a minimal amount of support for the commission. We've got to set up a strategy to meet the stakes, and strategies should be translated into acts to fight intolerance and racism.”
  EU policy on integration and ethnic, racial and religious discrimination
• “Thank you. Chairman, rapporteur. Colleagues, I want to begin by welcoming the work of our rapporteur. I think the draft proposal goes in the right direction, particularly the articles imposing the deletion of data held by border control officers immediately after the person has crossed the border. But nevertheless, as I have already said, my group is very wary when it comes to implementation. I don't think border procedures are necessarily going to be more effective. So I think unless there is a significant increase in the number of border guards carried out by member states, I think basically, uh, checks are going to be longer for many travellers. So ineffectiveness is one thing, but then there's also greater danger for the personal data that's collected. Excuse me. So a shadow rapporteur for the left, I want to reinforce that aspect of data protection and ensure that all guarantees are in place to ensure that this data is just used for border crossing procedures, so I'll be tabling amendments to clarify the use of this data, particularly by private sector operators. So there shouldn't be accident reports, analysis or anything else in that data. And it certainly shouldn't be shared with private operators. In addition, there shouldn't be any discrimination vis a vis people who don't want to or can't use this system to provide the data. For example, there are countries that don't deliver passports with the appropriate chips. But anyway, we're going to continue to work constructively on this. I'm not fully convinced of the added value of all of this, but nevertheless, we'll be doing our best to protect the data of European and other citizens as carefully as possible. Thank you.”
  EU digital travel & border-data systems