The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) rejected unilateral closures of Schengen internal borders during crises in an opinion adopted on Thursday 13 October and called on Member States to consult regions on the issue.
Restrictions at the EU’s internal borders should be reintroduced in the event of a crisis only as a last resort, in ways that minimise disruption to border regions and are limited in time, says the Committee in response to the reform of the Schengen Borders Code (see EUROPE 12853/1).
“The unmanaged closure of national borders during the Covid-19 pandemic has deeply disturbed border regions and freedom of movement”, reacted Antje Grotheer (PES, German), rapporteur on the dossier.
The CoR opinion supports the obligation to take into account the “disruptive impact on the social and economic life of border regions and to provide for mandatory consultation of local and regional authorities”.
On the instrumentalisation of migration, the CoR believes that the Commission’s definition is “too broad and lacks clarity” and that the proposals create too many possibilities for derogations, potentially to the detriment of asylum seekers.
The CoR calls for “tangible quantitative and qualitative criteria” to qualify a situation as ‘instrumentalisation’ and to use it only if the State concerned can justify how the nature of these actions endangers the core functions of the State.
Link to the opinion: https://aeur.eu/f/3lc (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)