Commission told to tighten Schengen rules
France and Italy want member states to have more powers to impose national border controls.
The leaders of France and Italy are putting pressure on the European Commission to agree more powers for member states to impose national border controls in the face of an influx of refugees from north Africa.
Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, and Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, want the Commission to toughen up proposals it is currently drafting for changes in the implementation of the Schengen border-free travel area.
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They wrote to José Manuel Barroso, the president of the Commission, and Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, on Tuesday (26 April), saying that work the Commission has been preparing on Schengen has “to materialise and be intensified rapidly”. The letter also called for “new measures”.
The Commission is scheduled to present its plans next week (4 May) but France and Italy fear that they will not go far enough.
An emergency meeting of national interior ministers has been scheduled for 12 May to discuss the implications for EU migration policy of the uprisings in the Arab world and the potential influx of migrants to the EU.
France wants to allow national border controls to be re-introduced selectively and to expand the conditions under which these checks could be reinstated. At present, this can only be done temporarily, for reasons of “public order”, and requires member states to notify the Commission.
Laurent Wauquiez, France’s Europe minister, said that in case of a “major surge at Europe’s gates”, member states should be allowed to reimpose border checks for the duration of the crisis. France and Italy also want to strengthen Frontex, the EU’s external border agency, by giving it the permanent capacity for aerial and naval surveillance.
A spokesperson for the Commission yesterday acknowledged the need to clarify and review the Schengen rules “in order to apply them more correctly and more easily and in a spirit of better co-operation between the member states”.
One diplomat predicted “hard and painful” negotiations among the EU’s member states about changing the Schengen rules, while another said countries such as Austria, Germany and the Netherlands were in favour of strengthening national controls over the EU’s internal borders.
Gerd Leers, the Dutch immigration minister, said on Tuesday: “I will resist those who call for simply reinstating border controls, for that goes against an open Europe. But I welcome the debate on how to strengthen and improve the Schengen rules to combat illegal immigration, especially in these times of turmoil.”
Sarkozy and Berlusconi want changes to the Schengen rules agreed in principle at a summit of the EU’s national leaders on 24 June.
The two leaders issued their call on Tuesday after meeting in Rome to resolve a row over an influx of around 25,000 Tunisian migrants given temporary residency by Italy and thereby the freedom to travel across the Schengen area.
France, the preferred destination of many, denied them entry and set up ad hoc checks on trains arriving from Italy.
MEPs have raised concerns that modifying Schengen would undo the achievement of creating a border-free travel area for more than 400 million citizens and play into the hands of anti-immigration groups.
“To put in question the Schengen agreement and to discuss the reintroduction of border checks would play into the hands of forces hostile to Europe and would obliterate historic, democratic progress,” said Nadja Hirsch, a German Liberal MEP.
Sophie in ’t Veld, a Dutch Liberal MEP, accused Sarkozy and Berlusconi of trying to dismantle the Schengen system and take it hostage “for internal political purposes” in order to appease extremist parties.