Who would be granted these visas?

There are a whole array of cases, for example a family belonging to a religious community subject to persecution or systemic violence. That is the case for Christians in Syria and Iraq, or non-Muslims in Afghanistan, also LGBT people in most Muslim countries, or ethnic communities whose safety is at stake.

If approved by Parliament, what is the next step?

As it is an own-initiative report, we are not talking about a binding law in one single shot. It is a call for the Commission to submit legislation to deal with this matter.

Recent surveys show immigration remains a concern for Europeans. What other proposals does Parliament have on the table?

The first thing is to separate facts from perceptions. There is a widely held perception that migration is out of control, an aggressive invasion of the EU, a Trojan horse. There is no empirical evidence to support this view; it is a fact that the number of arrivals has been declining dramatically.

We have a mandate to act in solidarity and share responsibility by means of a common European asylum system. Yet the Council is the missing link in the EU decision-making process.

This Parliament has done its best to deliver legislation including the review of the so-called Dublin regulation, which results in an extremely unfair allocation of responsibilities.

We need a common European system to handle asylum claims and not to overburden those countries facing the Mediterranean.