Brussels, 05/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 4 May, many voices were raised to warn the Commission and member states against anything that would be detrimental to the freedom of movement of European citizens within the Schengen area. In a press release that day on migration, the Commission agreed, at the behest of many states, to pose the principle of restoring internal border controls under new conditions - an approach denounced by the Party of European Socialists (PES), which feels the Commission has given way to Franco-Italian pressure and forsaken European principles by attacking the very foundations of the EU.
According to an EP civil liberties committee press release, Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar (S&D, Spain), who chairs the committee, states that using immigrants as a pretext to undermine the Schengen agreement's removal of EU internal border checks is “unacceptable”. “It is unacceptable that the arrival of a few tens of thousands of immigrants at the borders of countries which are among the largest in Europe and are founder members of European integration, each with a population of over 60 million, should serve as an excuse to question Schengen, the free movement of people and our common policy of freedom, security and justice. It is also unacceptable that this is so obviously happening as a result of highly populist anti-European pressures”, Lopez Aguilar goes on to say. He adds: “All this sends a discouraging message, one which is deeply negative and contrary to the Europe that we need”.
The EP civil liberties committee also felt that the Schengen system should not be changed “given that all the legal instruments already exist”. It points out that the “right course of action is to implement the existing legal instruments”. According to a press release, the committee also underlines the fact that the evaluation mechanism system should be implemented in co-decision with the European Parliament. This is a bone of contention between the EP and Council over the legal base, as the Council has to date favoured an article that would erode co-decision and would only keep the EP informed in the evaluation system (the Commission put proposals forward on this in November 2010).
The ALDE Group and its president, Guy Verhofstadt of Belgium, believe that the France-Italy border row is a “shameful ping-pong that puts at risk the free movement of people”, to cite a press release. Responding to the Commission's communication on forging a more sustainable migration policy, Liberals and Democrats “cautioned against any knee-jerk reaction which failed to address the underlying causes yet put at risk the important achievement of border free movement in Europe” while not addressing the issues underpinning the current debate on application of the Schengen agreements. “The answer to migration flows should not be a reintroduction of border controls or a change in the Schengen rules”, Verhofstadt goes on to say, adding: “What we need is transparency and accountability. The Commission and Parliament should be involved in the evaluation of the concepts of 'public order' inside the Schengen area to prevent unilateral decisions of re-introducing border controls”.
Fierce debate is expected between the EP and Council if the Commission puts a legislative proposal forward on recasting the Schengen agreement, an option that it has not yet fully defined and which should be fine-tuned during the extraordinary meeting of home ministers on 12 May, in Brussels.
In the meantime, on Wednesday, the EPP Group welcomed the ideas floated by the Commission and also underlined the importance of having a Community mechanism, a decision from all the European institutions, when it comes to restoring internal border controls. Manfred Weber and the EP rapporteur on Schengen, Carlos Coelho, took the same line. The EPP vice-president, Weber, said the EP will support the Commission in developing the Schengen agreements in a European spirit, and added that they would accept nothing that would be detrimental to freedom of movement as a symbol of Europe and that there should be no division within the EU over what would be a two-speed Schengen area. Weber believes it is thus vital to have the agreement of all institutions in order to be able to restore temporary internal border checks.
Carlos Coelho asserted that, first and foremost, “good control of external borders is essential” as, “when this is not the case, it weakens the Schengen area, undermines the Union's credibility and destroys mutual trust”. He asserted his support for “a true Schengen evaluation mechanism to verify compliance with the rules and border controls and to identify problems, help resolve them and, if necessary, temporarily reintroduce border controls”. (S.P./transl.jl)