Brussels, 25/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - Speaking in Paris on Tuesday 24 May, French Minister of the Interior Claude Guéant said that the current functioning of the Schengen zone is “failing”, even “entirely failing”, AFP reports. One month ago, French President Nicolas Sarkozy made the same criticism, asking “who governs” Schengen today.
This criticism comes as the European Commission was invited by around 15 member states, in Brussels on 12 May, to make proposals to modify and reinforce the Schengen safeguard clause, which allows the Schengen member states to bring back controls on their internal borders. These proposals are highly anticipated by the minister, who stated that the current safeguard clause “can only be implemented with the authorisation of the EU and for events of a timely nature”, he pointed out, meaning that it cannot be applied to facilitate the management of Tunisian migratory flows arriving in Italy in recent months, AFP continues.
Although it is “true that the question (was then) raised within the government as to whether the safeguard clause should be invoked” on that occasion, the minister added, the law governing it “is extremely specific” and the case of the Tunisian flows “does not correspond”. Instead of this, however, France opted for a reinforcement of police controls in the border area with Italy, which is allowed by Schengen, but still led to calls for clarifications by the European Commission.
The minister anticipated what form the Commission's new mechanism for the new safeguard clause could take, referring to two “probable frameworks”. The first could be “a general framework which (would allow) each of the states, under the control of the European Union, to decide at the level of the state to close the borders on a temporary basis”. The other, a “more European framework”, could apply to tackle “crises affecting several states with a properly systemic nature”. A Commission source announced on Wednesday 25 May that political discussions on this new safeguard clause are still underway and that at this stage “we do not yet know whether proposals will be made before or after the European summit of 24 June”, said a spokesperson to Commissioner Cecilia Malmström. (S.P./transl.fl)