THE EUROPEAN Commission has fleshed out contentious plans for emergency border controls in the Schengen visa-free zone, prompting Socialist MEPs to accuse it of caving in to Franco-German pressure for stricter migration rules.
The Schengen system allows hundreds of millions of people to travel without passports in 25 countries, encompassing huge swathes of continental Europe and non-EU countries such as Norway and Switzerland. Ireland and Britain do not participate.
The commission’s proposal to overhaul the system comes in the wake of demands for an overhaul by French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Saying the Schengen arrangements should be protected and defended as a “beautiful achievement”, home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmström said she was exploring the feasibility of new border controls to deal with an unexpected influx of migrants.
Formal legislative proposals to revise the Schengen system are likely within the next two months, according a communique on migration she issued yesterday.
Her paper also calls for the relaxation in emergency situations of the rules under which applications for asylum must be processed in the EU country of first arrival. Ireland and many other member states have opposed this.
About 25,000 mainly Tunisian migrants have fled the political upheavals in their own country to the Italian island of Lampedusa, leading Mr Berlusconi to seek special measures from his EU counterparts to share the burden.
Such aid has not been forthcoming, however, and Rome is giving six-month travel visas to the migrants in an attempt to encourage them to leave Italy. Many of the Tunisians have tried to go to France, prompting Paris to send them back to Italy.
Although Mr Sarkozy, Mr Berlusconi and other EU leaders are under political pressure from far-right anti-immigration opponents, Ms Malmström argued against “populist and simplistic solutions”.
While the commissioner’s paper called for strengthened border control and “better targeted” legal migration, she said “secure borders does not mean we are creating ‘fortress Europe’”.
Still, the Socialist group in the European Parliament accused Ms Malmström of taking steps to dismantle the Schengen pact. “Changing a fundamental treaty such as the Schengen agreement would attack the foundation of the EU itself, as freedom of movement is one of the fundamental principle upon which the EU is based,” said the Party of European Socialists.
Ms Malmström said Schengen was “not perfect” and should be improved. While the system has always been monitored under intergovernmental rules outside the ambit of EU law, she said the commission should lead a new evaluation mechanism.
“A mechanism must also be put in place to allow the union to handle situations where a member state is not fulfilling its obligations to control its section of the external border, or where a particular portion of the external border comes under unexpected and heavy pressure due to external events,” her paper said.
“A co-ordinated . . . response by the union in critical situations would undoubtedly increase trust among member states. It would also reduce recourse to unilateral initiatives by member states to temporarily reintroduce internal border controls.”
