The national ambassadors of the Member States to the EU took note on Monday 14 February of the progress of the work on the revision of the Schengen evaluation mechanism, proposed in June by the European Commission (see EUROPE 12850/2), and for the most part welcomed the compromise proposals of the French Presidency of the Council of the EU, a source said.
One point was left open: how to deal with Member States that have fulfilled all the criteria for joining Schengen, but have not yet received the green light from the other Member States. The question here is when the evaluations were carried out in these three countries (Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia) and whether they need to be updated. Some countries argued for no further evaluations, while others felt that the three candidates could be quickly assessed again once a decision on accession to the free movement area was taken.
On Monday, Member States were asked in particular about the planned unannounced field visits organised by the Commission, about recommendations or a report to be drawn up by the Member States or the Commission, and about the way the European Parliament is consulted.
On this last point, they decided to wait for the European Parliament’s opinion on the subject, which will be voted on in the Committee on Civil Liberties in March and in the plenary at the beginning of April, according to a Coreper preparation note dated 11 February. The European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties has asked Member States to be able to be on an “equal footing” with the EU Council on this issue and possibly conduct trilogues with it, whereas the legal basis chosen by the Commission does not allow for an ordinary legislative procedure.
Member States were also asked to accept a series of compromises on surprise field inspections.
The Commission has provided in its text that unannounced evaluations, without prior notice, may be organised either to evaluate practices at internal borders or when the Commission becomes aware of new or systemic problems that may have a significant negative impact on the security of citizens or when it has reason to believe that a Member State is seriously failing to fulfil its obligations under the Schengen acquis, in particular in the event of allegations of serious violations of fundamental rights at the external borders.
Exceptionally, the Commission may inform the Member State concerned at least 24 hours in advance, when the main purpose of the unannounced visit is a random verification of the implementation of the Schengen acquis.
“Discussions in the EU Council have led to an adaptation of the criteria for these three cases and to a limitation of the cases” in which a 24-hour notification is required, the note says.
The compromise proposed by the French Presidency of the EU Council thus provides that unannounced visits must be notified at least 24 hours in advance. However, unannounced visits at internal borders do not give rise to such prior notification. Prior notification is not mandatory when the Commission has serious reasons to believe that serious violations of fundamental rights are taking place, nor would it be mandatory for verification visits (first evaluation, verification of the implementation of an action plan, serious deficiencies), the note says.
As regards recommendations, the Commission’s proposal is to merge the evaluation report and the recommendations addressed to the Member State into a single document and a recommendation letter. This single act would be adopted by the Commission. “However, for evaluations corresponding to the most important issues, only the report should be adopted by the Commission, while the EU Council adopts the recommendations”, the note says, especially in cases of serious deficiencies, thematic evaluations or first evaluation exercises. Link to the document: https://aeur.eu/f/br (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)