Commission proposes temporary checks at internal Schengen borders
Changes to ease pressure on Schengen system as border checks will be possible ‘under strick conditions’.
The European Commission has proposed changes to the European Union’s migration policy, to defuse criticism by member states of the EU’s Schengen area of borderless travel.
In a plan adopted by the college of commissioners yesterday (4 May), Cecilia Malmström, the European commissioner of home affairs, proposes a suspension clause that would allow the temporary reintroduction of checks at internal Schengen borders. Such border checks would be possible only “under very strict conditions” and would be “monitored at European level”, Malmström said. “Schengen is a fantastic achievement and we should defend it,” she stressed.
France last month began checking trains coming from Italy to prevent Tunisian migrants entering France. Other countries, including Austria, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, announced that they might take similar steps if Italy continued giving temporary residency permits to Tunisian migrants.
Short-term concerns
Malmström warned against a Schengen reform dictated by short-term concerns. She said that the arrival of around 25,000 migrants in Italy had created an “exceptional situation” but also suggested that the challenge was not serious enough to trigger the suspension clause. She pointed out that 650,000 people had fled the civil war in Libya since February and that 236,000 people had asked for asylum in the EU last year.
The French foreign ministry welcomed the proposal as a “first, useful contribution” to the strengthening of the Schengen area and the EU’s migration policy. It welcomed specifically the proposed clause allowing the temporary re-introduction of border checks.
The Commission’s proposal will be discussed by national interior ministers at an emergency meeting in Brussels next Thursday (12 May). EU leaders will discuss migration policy at a summit on 24 June.
The plan does not spell out the conditions under which border checks might be reintroduced, or what the Commission’s role will be. “I think it is very important not to undermine the whole idea of Schengen, that it is not done unilaterally, and that it is based on very well-defined criteria that are limited in time and that there is a European decision around this,” she said. “Otherwise, I think we will risk the whole system.”
‘Knee-jerk reaction’
Sarah Ludford, a UK Liberal MEP, said that free movement was “too valuable for both European citizens and economies to sacrifice in a knee-jerk reaction to the current challenges from north Africa”. “It is essential that individual member states fulfil their responsibilities in dealing with numbers of migrants that are not unmanageable, instead of destroying the Schengen zone,” she said.
Manfred Weber, a German centre-right MEP, said: “We will not accept any attempts to restrict the freedom of movement as a core symbol of Europe. There must not be any new divisions in the EU.”
Concerns over borderless travel were highlighted in the latest assessment of the threat from organised crime, published yesterday by Europol, the EU’s police co-operation agency. “Albanian-speaking, Turkish and former-Soviet Union criminal groups are seeking to expand their interests in the EU, and may exploit opportunities in the possible accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the Schengen zone, and recent and prospective EU visa exemptions for Western Balkan states, Ukraine and Moldova,” the report warned. France and Germany are currently blocking Bulgaria and Romania’s accession to Schengen.
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