Brussels, 22/01/2016 (Agence Europe) - The Home Affairs and Justice Ministers will meet in Amsterdam on Monday 25 and Tuesday 26 January for an informal meeting which will be dominated, on Monday, by the question of the future of the Schengen zone and the reinforcement of the external borders of the EU, with the ministers to hold an initial exchange of views on the legislative proposals put forward by the European Commission in mid-December.
On Monday, the Home Affairs Ministers' morning will be given over to a discussion on terrorism and European measures to tackle it. They will also inaugurate the new Counterterrorism Centre set up within the agency Europol on 1 January of this year. But it is over lunch that they will tackle the toughest issues, such as the state of health of the Schengen free movement area and the major problems faced by the member states in enforcing decisions to relocate asylum seekers.
As regards Schengen, the German Home Affairs Minister, Thomas de Maizière, set the tone on Thursday 21 January, stating on German radio that controls on the internal borders will continue for the foreseeable future and that the current situation makes it impossible to predict how long this will go on for. Austria and France are also among the countries which have brought back controls and this week even raised the idea of putting an upper limit on the annual number of asylum applications submitted. On Monday, the ministers may discuss how to extend these controls, given the fact that the possibilities available under the Schengen Border Code have almost all been exhausted, which will make it impossible for these countries to extend the measures beyond the end of May.
The question had already been raised in early December (see EUROPE 11446) by the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the EU, which asked the member states whether article 26 of the Schengen Code should be activated. This article allows external border control measures to be extended several times, in this case justified on the basis of the migratory pressure, for six-month periods and up to a maximum of two years, following an evaluation by the Commission and activation of article 19. “It's that or the end of Schengen”, one source commented, adding that article 26 would make it possible to provide a framework for the request of these countries without condemning Schengen.
Over at the Commission, a discussion of the ministers on article 26 is also anticipated. This article can be activated when persistent problems are noted on the external borders of the EU, for instance. At this stage, the Commission is refusing to reveal its plans, going no further than to state that it is continuing with its regular assessments of the external borders of the EU and that the current situation does not yet justify the triggering of this 'article 19/article 26' procedure. “We are not yet in that situation”, said Natasha Bertaud, a spokesperson of the institution, on Friday 22 January.
In December, however, the ministers implicitly asked the Commission to begin a specific assessment of the situation in Greece, which it more or less agreed to do. This assessment leads directly into the decision under article 26, but as far as the Commission is concerned, no specific assessment, for Greece or anywhere else, has yet been launched, it officially announced.
“The Commission's position is not too clear, because it doesn't want it to look like it is encroaching on Schengen, or to admit that the relocation decisions, like the agreement with Turkey, are a failure”, our source continued.
On Monday afternoon, the Home Affairs Ministers will then examine the proposal made by the Commission in December to convert the agency Frontex into a European coastguards and border guards agency with new powers, including powers to intervene in a country if its borders are causing problems. This will be an initial discussion, which may already allow attendances to start to emerge. The ministers could, for instance, express their positions on the right of intervention conferred upon the new agency, a competence which has so far been criticised by Spain, Greece and certain countries of the East, but which has more or less positive support from countries such as France and Germany.
On Tuesday, the Justice Ministers will meet in the morning only. They will be presented with the new proposed directive on the extension of the criminal records file to third-country nationals, discuss cyber-crime and the circulation of evidence in the EU in the framework of criminal investigations. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)