On the evening of Thursday 12 June, the EU Member States and associated third countries approved a declaration celebrating 40 years of the Schengen area of free movement, which today brings together 29 countries, including four associated countries (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein), and 450 million citizens.
While the interior ministers of EU countries were expected to take note of this declaration on Friday 13 June (and not to approve it, as mistakenly written in Bulletin 13655A5), their aim was to recommit to an area of free movement, ideally without internal borders, but also capable of adapting to threats.
“We have come together on the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Schengen Agreement to highlight our common commitment to Europe’s security, building resilience and readiness for today’s challenges. Guided by our shared values, we pledge to continue investing in the common area without internal borders, ensuring strong management of our external borders, a more effective fight against illegal migration and a high level of internal security. We are determined to work together and foster mutual trust”, said Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s Minister of the Interior and Administration.
The declaration sets out seven commitments to preserve and consolidate Schengen, notably on defending the free movement of persons by “ensuring that the reintroduction of internal border controls remains a measure of last resort” and taking “all appropriate measures with respect to external border management, secondary movements, migration, the return of those illegally staying as well as the prevention and combating of off-line and on-line cross-border crime, terrorism, as well as emerging threats such as hybrid threats or cybercrime”.
The Declaration was adopted at a time when more than a dozen countries are currently carrying out internal border controls, and at least six of them (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway and Sweden) have been doing so since 2015.
When asked about this issue and the fact that the new German government has hardened its stance on internal controls, the French Minister for the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, said he understood “that Germany must show its people greater firmness. I indicated (to Alexander Dobrindt, the German Interior Minister) that we could find ways, for example with mixed patrols, that would enable us to assert a firm resolve, without blocking, in particular, daily cross-border commuting for honest people who go to work from one country to another”.
The French minister also said that “a number of rules need to be re-founded today. When Schengen and other rules were founded, we were in another world. Today, things are very simple. Our people, all our people, in all the Member States, are asking us to regain control of immigration. If we don’t, they will replace us with far-right and populist parties. (...) And precisely because things have changed, because we can see that immigration can be one of the weapons of hybrid warfare, we need to make our rules much firmer”.
For his part, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Magnus Brunner, pointed out at the start of the meeting that the Schengen Borders Code allows temporary checks at internal borders and that the Commission is monitoring the situation closely as guardian of the Treaties. And “it is important to always find cooperation between the different institutions, at police level and with the border guards of the Member States. We are looking at this very specifically, but the objective must of course be that there should be no more border controls within the Schengen area, and that's why we have to do our job: we have to secure the external borders better and create better cooperation” between member countries.
“We need to put the ‘European house’ in order. We want to implement the Pact on Migration and Asylum as quickly as possible”, the Commissioner also said.
We also need “dialogue with third countries, because we need agreements with third country Member States to improve the overall situation”.
Link to the statement: https://aeur.eu/f/hb5 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)