Brussels, 13/12/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 13 December, in Brussels, home affairs ministers discussed Commission proposals aimed at strengthening the governance of the Schengen area and allowing member states, under exceptional circumstances, to be able to reintroduce controls at their internal borders. Ministers were not expected to take a decision on Tuesday but to reach future guidelines for texts tabled on 16 September this year by the Commission.
Debates nonetheless allowed headway to be made towards a future compromise with regards decision-making. A certain consensus was reached on the principle that it is not the Commission that will decide to allow a state to reintroduce internal border controls, as had been suggested in September, but rather the Council. Here, it would be a matter of establishing a collective decision-making framework, with member states not being able to decide on their own, entrusted to the Council and not to the Commission. The French and German home ministers, Claude Guéant and Hans-Peter Friedrich, noted these tendencies and welcomed the discussions, with Guéant speaking of a “good general spirit” and Friedrich speaking of “possible compromise” on keeping current powers, i.e. those devolved to member states.
There must still be discussion on the dossier, however, as ministers did not necessarily go into detail and did not, for example, speak of the arrangements for decision-making (majority or otherwise).
On Tuesday, ministers also discussed strengthening the political steering of Schengen, with a memo from France, Germany, Spain and Italy having been drafted on this. The idea behind it was to strengthen debates by Schengen countries meeting within the Council by giving them a more
political and less bureaucratic note and highlighting certain areas of dysfunction. To put it clearly:
it is a matter of strengthening the “discipline” of the Schengen states, “as for the euro”, a diplomatic source said. (SP/transl.jl)