EU citizens need legally-binding rules on consular protection abroad after the Mumbai terrorist strike exposed flaws in the current set-up, a senior Spanish MEP has said, accusing a German official of “shameful” conduct in India.
“We need to make it compulsory for consuls to behave in a certain manner in situations of crisis,” Spanish Liberal MEP Ignasi Guardans – who was leading a European Parliament trade delegation to Mumbai when armed groups attacked the city on 26 November – told EUobserver.
“European citizens need to know that when they need the European Union, they have 27 consular services at their disposal in case of emergency, so that they can be as proud of being European citizens as Americans are [of being US citizens].”
The Spanish deputy was sheltering near the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai with a group of other MEPs and assistants on the night of the attacks, when the German consul general arrived on the scene.
“He came and he picked up only the Germans, saying that memorable sentence which I will never forget ‘I can take only the Germans’ and then he left, taking only his fellow citizens and leaving everyone else,” Mr Guardans said.
Germany and France also mistreated a dual-nationality parliamentary aide, with France at first refusing to issue her “laissez-passer” documents needed to leave the country and Germany asking her to go to its consulate to fill out forms despite an ongoing state of emergency, the Spanish deputy added.
In the aftermath of the attacks, France failed to give laissez-passer documents to other delegation members, causing people to scramble for help from their national consulates. France and Spain also gave misleading information about special planes sent from Europe to take the parliamentarians home.
