The evacuation of Europeans from Bombay, the souk denounces MEPs

(B2) President of the delegation of the European Parliament committee in India - which found itself stuck in Bombay during the attacks - the Catalan Spaniard Ignasi Guardans (who belongs to the liberal and democratic group ALDE) has a very special memory of the how the evacuation of MEPs took place.

To read the letter he has just sent to HG Pöttering, the President of the European Parliament, the testimony is quite appalling in front of "the lack of coordination" (to be nice) between the various consulates and embassies to take care of nationals of the EU caught in a crisis situation. And the parliamentarians should also ask an oral question on this subject to the Council (and to the French presidency).

His story is worth reading in all these convolutions. For as the MP puts it: I am convinced that there are lessons to be learned from what we have witnessed and how this should be handled by the various European actors. [...] What we experienced was also experienced by other Europeans - he continues. And it shows how much work remains to make European citizenship not just an empty word, especially in times of crisis in a third country where European citizens might expect more from the European Union - than we love and support »

(the original text is in English)

The difference between theory and practice, the German Consul says: "I only take Germans".

"A member of the EC (European Commission) delegation in Delhi and myself we assumed the coordination with different European authorities to be evacuated from there and be taken together to a safer place. It was during those hours that the German Consul in Bombay showed us all how different the EU theory and discourse can be from reality, when he came to the place we where sheltering in, repeating that sentence which I will never forget: “I will only take Germans”. And so he did."

The French offer to take charge of the delegation

"Later on, immediately after sunrise, the Spanish Consul brought in two cars and brought those of us from the restaurant to a hotel lounge where they took care of us. At that time, the UK Consul and the one from Hungary had also offered their support in different ways. Some hours later, we accepted the invitation of the French consulate to gather all at the Consul's Residence. It was there where the European Parliament Delegation was reunited, including those who had escaped from the Taj Mahal hotel, and those who had spent most of the night in the streets. We were later joined by the French Ambassador and by the Head of the EC Delegation in Delhi. On Thursday night we all moved to the residence of an Indian businessman, who for the following 15 hours provided us with rooms, food and even some basic clothes and hygienic stuff."

... But the permanent contradiction reigns! And, without a passport (lost in the events), no possibility of escape

"During all that time, a long line of contradictory information regarding our situation and how and when we would leave the country succeeded one to each other, depending on who would you talk to. Most of us had no passport, so there was no way to take any commercial flight. And at that time we still believed it would be a good thing for all of us to stay and return together. An official from the French Consulate informed us that they would provide us with a “laissez passer” and the exit visa delivered by the Indian authorities. On the basis of this promise of a common treatment of our papers, members of the delegation, including myself, kindly said no to the offers of our respective consulates to provide us with travel documents."

For reasons I don't understand the promised passes don't arrive

"Unfortunately, for reasons I still do not understand, that promise was never fulfilled. 24 hours later we had still not received any personal travel document. It is to be noted that even a staff member of the Delegation, who has double French-German citizenship, was at that moment denied the right to receive French papers, on the bureaucratic argument that she had used her German passport to enter the country (Only many hours later, and some political pressure in Paris, the French consulate accepted to provide her with a French temporary passport)."

The German consul reaches the pinnacle of bureaucracy: "come and report the loss of your passport to the police"

"All confidence lost in the french offers, each one rushed to contact their own national representation, some of which had also made an offer to provide papers for non-nationals. And within hours we received very different documents: some got a full new valid passport, others a temporary one, others a laissez-passer with or without the Indian exit visa. Again, the German consul was the one who gave the worst answer, in form (extremely impolite) and in substance to the requests received, complaining that this German-French national should have denounced the loss of her passport in writing, and that she should personally go to the police if she wanted an exit visa."

Very fast Spanish reaction... but with a very small plane too small to take everyone

"Some remarks regarding the evacuation itself. The Spanish Government made an offer from the very beginning to take us all on their plane. But they seriously miscalculated the number of Spanish citizens they had to take care of, and they sent a very small plane. "

The French plane is late, the order follows the counter-order...

"They then asked us to accept an offer from the French Government, which we did, and we all went to bed on Thursday believing what we had been told: that a French plane had left Paris hours ago and would be taking us in the morning On Friday morning we learned that that again was not true, that a big plane from the Ministry of Defense was coming much later than expected, and that it would only leave Mumbai after confirming that no French citizen was left, and not earlier than Saturday 3 am. It was then when several MEPs, who had their passports, some of them strongly upset, organized their departure on their own and left in the following hours. The rest of us, now trying to clarify the situation of our documents, without which no commercial flight was possible, we stayed together until late night. As you know, but that time the Parliament had assumed the organization of the departure of everybody and booked several places on a flight to Brussels. An interpreter, a policy adviser and I we flew back in the French evacuation flight."

My criticism of the French presidency: no transparency, no information, or bad information...

"My criticism here is not on what the French presidency decided was
best for us and for their citizens. What was wrong in all this was that we were treated for many hours, in particular by the French Ambassador and the one official under him who was put in charge of us, more or less as a group of helpless and irresponsible children who needed evacuation. No transparency, no information, even misinformation in some cases, no sharing of decisions, no reasonable options made available to us. It all added stress to a group of serious and experienced persons already under strong emotional pressure without any personal belongings with them. This is also something that could be seriously improved."

(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde)