The National Ambassadors to the European Union (Coreper) decided on Wednesday 13 November to transmit their views on the revision of the Schengen area evaluation mechanism in a form other than the EU Council conclusions. Their discussion on the issue did not lead to a consensus on a draft text.
For this technical exercise, which consists of gathering the opinions of the Member States on the forthcoming revision of the evaluation mechanism, the idea of the Finnish Presidency of the Council of the EU was to draw conclusions, but several Member States refused to allow them to raise broader issues, such as migration or freedom of movement within Schengen. At this stage, the Presidency will therefore limit itself to a report, and the form in which the EU Council’s message will be transmitted to the Commission has yet to be determined.
The Schengen evaluation mechanism, which analyses how the common external borders are monitored (the mechanism does not cover the temporary internal controls currently still carried out by several Member States, editor’s note), provided for a first evaluation after 5 years, before December 2019.
The intended draft conclusions reiterated the importance for Member States to have a robust evaluation mechanism that allows, inter alia, recommendations to be made to countries and surprise inspections to be launched.
However, in a note dated 11 November, the Presidency already conceded that Member States were not unanimous on the integration in the conclusions of broader migration-related aspects, for example, the link between the asylum situation and the functioning of the Schengen area in particular. Some countries wanted to remove this link while others, such as Italy and Spain, wanted to maintain it.
The draft conclusions presented the EU Council’s main messages, in particular those calling on the Commission to identify solutions to remedy the shortcomings detected more quickly; the Commission and the Member States were also invited to speed up the publication of the reports. These messages will still be forwarded to the Commission. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)