Brussels, 01/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 1 October, the European Commission told MEPs from the European Parliament's civil liberties committee that it had sent Austria, Germany and Slovenia a letter asking for clarification on their decision to re-establish controls temporarily at their internal borders in order to regulate their arrivals of migrants.
At a hearing on the situation in the Schengen area during the current refugee crisis, the Commission representative, Laurent Muschel, nevertheless said that these three countries were not currently in breach of the rules, but that it was a case of sending the letters to ensure “the proportionality of these controls”. The three countries last week requested, especially at the European summit on 23 September, to extend the length of time they applied these border controls (see EUROPE 11395).
According to the Commission, the recent cases of re-establishing controls “does not mean the end of Schengen” as there is provision in the rules of the Schengen border code for re-establishing controls. The 2013 reform provided for the re-establishment of border controls in cases of totally unpredicted urgent situations that could constitute a threat to public security. According to this reform, therefore, if unpredictable events require immediate action (for example, a terrorist attack), the member states can re-introduce controls unilaterally for a maximum of ten days, and any prolongation must be checked at European level. Migration in itself cannot be considered a specific reason for re-establishing controls, but in practice it is this very mass influx of refugees that has determined the decisions of these three countries.
“We reviewed the Schengen border code in 2013. We did not include migration flows as potential reasons but the Commission thinks that this unique situation is able to justify the re-introduction of internal controls, which must be proportionate”, Muschel stated, saying that the three countries concerned had last week asked for further extensions of ten days. These controls will therefore last until 12 October in Germany, 15 October in Austria and 16 October in Slovenia. Muschel nevertheless stated that is was not an issue of totally closing the borders, as the migrants are still able to penetrate the territory of the country that has re-established controls at its borders.
The Commission said that Germany and Austria had furthermore asked for emergency help from the European Asylum Support Office (EASO), given the number of migrants arriving in these countries. On Wednesday 30 September, the region of Bavaria said that 270-280,000 asylum seekers had arrived in the country since September - in other words more than during the whole of 2014.
Hotspots still not operational. On Thursday, many MEPs made a link between the re-establishment of internal border controls and the need to apply the decisions on relocating refugees obtaining the right of asylum. Arrangements exist on secondary movements so as to avoid “asylum seekers wandering between member states”, said Christine Revault d'Allonnes Bonnefoy (S&D, France).
The same day, a technical seminar was held in Brussels on implementing the initial decisions on relocation, and on finalising the hotspots (bringing together experts from European agencies and infrastructure and staff from member states). The Commission recommended Italy and Greece to finalise their roadmap for creating these hotspots before the end of this week. Bringing together the Commission, the member states and the EASO, Frontex and Europol agencies, this technical meeting was expected to allow the framework to be set up for proceeding to the first refugee relocations. The European Council stated that these hotspots (areas for recording and identifying migrants' rights), should be operational in Greece and Italy by the end of November 2015 at the latest. Italy is due to set up four hotspots, including in Lampedusa and Catania, whilst Greece is due to set up a hotspot in Piraeus, a port in Athens.
At the European Parliament, Muschel had to respond to questions from MEPs on these hotspots or support teams for managing migration, as the Commission now calls them. In the Commission's view, the migrants unable to claim protection in Europe should be placed in “closed centres” for the returns procedure to be operated, whilst the people who have asked to be relocated to another member state should be placed in “centres with possibilities for being open”. The work of the member states would thus be “to convince the migrants to stay in these centres so that they can be relocated”, Muschel stated.
Turkey at centre of European attention. On Wednesday 30 September, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke to Austria's Chancellor Werner Faymann and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel on the phone in order to take stock of progress on the decisions taken at the European summit.
Their phonecall was also about making preparations for the visit of Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday 5 October. This meeting is expected to be the occasion for the Europeans to speak about how Ankara can contribute to managing the migrant flows. The Commission and member states have not thus far made any concrete proposal to Turkey, nor formally proposed that it should set up migrant reception centres before the migrants reach the EU. The Commission's expectations focus on improving the management of Turkish borders - the idea being to give more support to Ankara to control Turkey's borders.
“The refugee policy will be the focus of concerns, as well as security at Turkey's borders and the conflict in Syria”, said European Parliament President Martin Schulz on Thursday. Schulz is also due to meet Erdogan. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)