The Commission will launch a new reflection on how to strengthen the Schengen area to deal with crises such as the Covid-19 one, Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said on Thursday 18 June.
The aim will be to give new coherence between external and internal threats and the decisions to re-establish internal border controls, the Commissioner said. She intends to undertake that reflection within the framework of the Pact on Migration, which should restore mutual trust and which will be presented “soon”.
Ms Johansson was speaking to MEPs on the state of the free movement area. On 19 June, the European Parliament will decide on the return to a functional Schengen area and will ask the Member States to coordinate better. The Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) has already taken a position in this respect (EUROPE 12499/16).
Speaking on the resolution, LIBE Committee Chair Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar (S&D, Spain), said that “Schengen is not in good health” and that its survival is “at stake”. The Schengen area is everywhere the “the EU’s main asset for its 400 million citizens”.
The Spaniard denounced the unilateral measures taken by Member States in mid-March in the wake of the pandemic and the concrete consequences for people: “very long queues, an additional burden for the police, difficulties for seasonal workers”.
He called for consideration to be given to ways in which, in the future, there could be more consultation and more limited measures, since controls should only be used as a last resort. The message was sent to the Commission to do everything possible to avoid letting improvisation govern these national responses.
The Spaniard was joined by his Romanian colleague from Renew Europe, Dragoş Tudorache, who found the Commission a little too “timid” at first, when all Member States started to close their borders.
Paulo Rangel (EPP, Portugal) also disagreed with the lack of consultation, but pointed out that Member States had the right to reinstate these controls.
This was the same assessment made by Commissioner Johansson. In her view, no Member State has gone beyond what is provided for in the Schengen Code, which gives them the discretion to reinstate these measures “for two or six months”. Most of them will have put an end to their pandemic-related measures by the end of June with regard to internal borders.
She also recalled that some Member States are also still using the Code's facilities since 2016, six Member States having imposed controls related to terrorism or migration since that period: some of them will moreover be extended until October or mid-November, after having been “extended, re-extended, re-re-extended” she said, a little caustically.
With the reform put forward in 2018 to improve these arrangements for extending internal controls being blocked, future thinking will have several objectives, including equipping Schengen to deal with pandemics, the Commissioner said.
At present, only an external threat, for example, can justify a return to internal controls. It will be necessary to ensure that one no longer reacts solely under the pressure of events and simplifies procedures. There will also be a need for more consultation and sometimes meetings between Member States concerned by controls.
On the measures as such, the Commissioner said that Member States must be encouraged to put in place alternatives, such as police checks within countries and not strictly at borders.
The European Parliament, in its resolution, will touch upon the practical difficulties encountered by citizens during the pandemic. It will also say that, without a return to Schengen, there can be no economic recovery. As Fabienne Keller (Renew Europe, France) summarised, the return to Schengen is “a key factor for the recovery of the economy and employment”. She also calls for an assessment of Schengen during the pandemic, “to see what could have been done better”. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)