Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European Commissioner in charge of migration issues has explained that on Tuesday 2 May, the European Commission decided to extend internal border controls as practised by five countries, including four member states, by a further six months. The European Commission has, however, called on these countries to put a stop to these measures at the end of this six-month period. Germany, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Norway are currently carrying out controls of certain parts of their respective borders.
The Commission explained that, “Although the general situation is continuing to stabilise, there are still a significant number of illegal migrants and asylum seekers in Greece. This is why, as a precautionary measure, and if alternative solutions are introduced, the Commission is recommending that the Council extends controls for the last time and that these should be lifted in six-months time”.
The Commission requested that with regard to this period, as was the case in previous periods, controls should only be able to be carried out “in a targeted and limited manner and only as a last resort”.
In this connection, the Commission published a recommendation on Tuesday on targeted and proportionate police checks. They believe that member states in the Schengen area should carry out “proportionate” police checks in border areas rather than at the borders themselves because it believes that they would be harder to implement at the latter.
The Commission is proposing this possibility to Schengen member states as a means of strengthening their security, despite the fact that this decision to extend internal border controls by six months is the last time that this can be done because the extension options included in article 26 of the Schengen Border Code have now all been used up.
The previous extension decision was taken by the Commission on 25 January last, but only for a three-month period (see EUROPE 11711). After this period, member states will still have possibilities for temporarily reintroducing border controls, for example, if a terrorist threat justifies this measure. They will also be able to resort to these targeted police checks more often. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)