On Thursday 23 November, the European Commission published three documents relating to the Schengen area and the application by Member States of the current Dublin Regulation on asylum seekers.
With regard to Schengen, it presented a draft recommendation calling on the Member States to “continue and strengthen their close cooperation at all levels to combat serious threats”.
In particular, Member States “should establish permanent contact points within the authorities responsible for responding to serious threats to public order or internal security and inform each other and the Commission of the existence of these contact points”.
These permanent contact points should in particular monitor developments in terrorist threats, trafficking in firearms and other small arms and light weapons in vehicles, unauthorised traffic routes, drug trafficking or the modus operandi of individuals or groups of individuals linked, inter alia, to the smuggling of migrants or arms trafficking, including suppliers of false documents.
If a Member State decides to reintroduce temporary controls at internal borders, the Member States concerned by these reintroductions should organise regular bilateral meetings of the contact points or other services concerned to monitor the development of the serious threats identified, but also to examine the proportionality of the measures.
Member States should also continue to implement joint and complementary measures and limit the use of systematic checks at internal borders to exceptional situations, giving priority to mobile checks on the territory and increasing the use of modern technologies, according to the recommendation.
Continuous checks at internal borders: no major difficulties, according to the Commission
The Commission’s coordinator for the Schengen area has also submitted a report on the measures put in place by 6 countries (France, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Norway) – some since 2015 – at their internal borders. And it does not point to any negative impact on neighbouring countries or a lack of cooperation.
“Thanks to the ongoing dialogue initiated by the Schengen coordinator, the actions taken by the Member States are more transparent and the notifications submitted by the Member States for reintroductions provide more information on the measures than the notifications submitted in the past”, says the Commission in a report published the same day.
In addition, “cross-border cooperation, which sometimes involves more than two Member States, has been stepped up at various levels. Real progress has been made in stepping up the exchange of information and in using measures that limit the impact of reintroduced controls as much as possible”.
Another positive finding: “Despite the various notifications of checks at internal borders, the actual checks carried out at fixed points by border guards at designated crossing points are generally not systematic and are often supplemented by police measures. In most cases, checks are carried out close to internal borders, often by the police. In all cases, they are carried out on an unsystematic basis, and often by the police rather than the border guards”.
While the coordinator acknowledges that checks, which affect all means of transport (vehicles, trains, ferries, planes), can cause congestion on the roads, the national authorities have stressed that “checks can only be one factor in traffic congestion, alongside factors such as roadworks or accidents”.
Most checks are targeted using technologies and other tools that can also be used for policing purposes, without the need to reintroduce checks at internal borders (for example, automatic number plate recognition). Cross-border police cooperation is working well, in some cases providing intelligence that determines the scope and intensity of the border controls that have been reintroduced; moreover, joint police patrols “are appreciated by all the Member States concerned”.
Links to documents: https://aeur.eu/f/9pb; https://aeur.eu/f/9pa; https://aeur.eu/f/9pp (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)