Brussels, 15/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - In order to step up the measures to prevent crises on its external borders, the EU should be able to intervene in a member state which is unable to deal itself with the problems it encounters, or even if it does not feel that any additional measures should be taken on its borders.
This is what the European Commission proposed on Tuesday 15 December, when it presented a raft of proposals on the management of migration in the EU, including a regulation to create a new European border guard and coastguard agency. This new agency will be built on the foundation of Frontex and will ultimately possess this “right to intervene”.
With nearly 1.5 million people arriving in the EU since January of this year, the First Vice-President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, told the members of the European Parliament, meeting in Strasbourg on Tuesday, that this new European structure, the core of which will be a new European border guard and coastguard agency, aims to “prevent unbalanced situations to better manage crises”. “It cannot be ruled out that there will be further exceptional situations which the member states will be unable to deal with on their own”, he said.
This new agency, which will involve representatives of the national border surveillance authorities, may be provided with additional staff, from 400 people at the start of 2016 to nearly 1,000 in 2020. Its budget is expected to follow, rising from €238 million in 2016 to €281 million in 2017 and €322 million in 2020. A permanent reserve of coastguards and border guards of 1,500 officers will also be set up by the member states. This reserve will be made available to the new agency, which it will be able to deploy upon request.
The nature of this agency will be first and foremost preventative, the Commission explained. Its role will mainly be to monitor the situation on the external borders of the EU. It will be able to intervene in a number of cases, in the event of tension on a given section of joint borders. It will also, in certain sensitive areas, be able to take the initiative to carry out vulnerability studies. These studies will consist of requesting information from individual member states, which will have to report on their actions, personnel and financial resources. These studies will give the agency an overview of how this state is dealing with a situation which has become tense.
A vulnerability study may lead to a decision on so-called “corrective” measures. Such decisions would be obligatory for the member state in question, which would therefore have no option other than to apply these corrective actions within a given timeframe. If this phase fails to give satisfaction, or should the member state refuse to implement these measures (for instance, a joint operation of the national and European coastguards), the agency would be able to activate its “right to intervene”, which may consist of rapidly deploying a team of European border guards and coastguards to a particularly vulnerable section of the borders of that country.
This decision would be based on comitology and the adoption of a delegated act of the Commission by qualified majority. Once the act has been adopted by the Council, the member state in question would not be able to oppose an operation being carried out on its border, according to European source. The Commissioner for Home Affairs, Dimitris Avramopoulos, reassured MEPs in Strasbourg that “nothing could be done without the cooperation of the member states”. On Friday 11 December, a European source said that everything should be done to avoid this final stage, going on to describe it as a “nuclear bomb”, as it would have a bearing on the sovereignty of the country in question.
A “right to intervene” which will never be applied? In fact, Timmermans went on to say that although it is laid down in the proposal in black and white, this right to intervene was highly theoretical and that in practice, everything possible would be done to avoid recourse to this option. He said that nothing could be done without the agreement of the member state in question, which seems to suggest that the national authorities would have a sort of right of veto over this decision to intervene and would remain sovereign. The EU cannot oblige a member state to “accept foreign border guards”, he stressed. Even so, the proposal refers to a decision which can be adopted by qualified majority of the Council to authorise such an intervention.
The regulation proposed by the Commission on Tuesday also beefs up the agency's role in returns, with a special returns section being set up within it. The agency will be able to respond to requests from member states by sending return intervention teams or taking its own decision to intervene, without receiving any specific requests. A mechanism for lodging complaints about breaches of fundamental rights will also be put in place.
The draft regulation will have to be adopted under the co-decision procedure by the Council and the Parliament. France and Germany have already given their backing to the Commission in a letter on 4 December indicating their support for this agency and its right to intervene. Poland and Hungary would seem to have some reservations over the regulation. Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias made it very clear in Brussels on Monday 14 December that any forthcoming proposal would have to respect the interests of the member states and their powers, for example, with regard to security and immigration. In Strasbourg, a number of political groups, like the EPP and the ECR, expressed their support for the proposal.
Schengen borders code strengthened. The Commission, on Tuesday, also presented a targeted revision of the Schengen borders code, comprising a recommendation for a voluntary humanitarian admission scheme for Syrian refugees currently in Turkey and a decision suspending for a year Sweden's involvement in the relocation of 160,000 people who have made it to Greece or Italy. A revised Eurosur handbook and a draft regulation creating a standard European return document were also presented.
The Commission proposes a targeted revision of the Schengen borders code to allow for systematic checks on all travellers, including nationals of Schengen area countries, crossing external EU borders. Each individual will be checked against police databases, such as the Schengen information system (SIS). This proposal is in response to a call from EU home affairs ministers to prevent foreign fighters from leaving and returning, thereby providing protection against the terrorist threat. The proposal also reinforces the need to check against biometric identifiers, border guards having to carry out these checks in cases of doubt over the authenticity of identity documents. Should the new checks slow passenger flows in airports and lead to lengthy queues, it could be decided to carry out only targeted checks against databases.
No clear figures for recommendation on Turkey. The recommendation announced at the end of November on refugees currently living in Turkey (Turkey is host to over 2.2 million Syrian refugees) proposes that, on humanitarian grounds, member states voluntarily admit Syrian refugees who have fled to Turkey. No precise figure to be achieved has been set. The Commission said that what was being talked about was a certain percentage of the number of people who have fled to Turkey. It did not give any further details, however. Member states, with some difficulty, agreed in July of this year to offer 22,000 resettlement places for refugees currently living in third countries.
Sweden could be exempted from requirement to relocate refugees. The Commission proposed, too, on Tuesday to exempt Sweden for a year from the need to provide relocation places for refugees who are at present in Italy of Greece. It has yet to make a statement on Sweden's request also to become part of the relocation mechanism and to benefit from a share of the 54,000 reserve left by home affairs ministers for the second year of the process. Sweden was due to relocate some of the 160,000 refugees eligible for relocation.
The Commission also presented its half-yearly report on the state of the Schengen area and assessments of implementation in Italy and Greece of hotspots for identifying and registering migrants, and also on relocation decisions. (EUROPE will return to this.) (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)