Brussels, 01/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - Deciding to rehash the Schengen acquis in an EU Border Code, the European Commission hopes to put the finishing touches to the internal market in terms of the free circulation of individuals, bearing the most recent round of enlargement in mind. In June, the European Parliament will examine the Cashman Report on the draft Border Code. Meanwhile, the members of the EP's Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee looked on Wednesday at the steps leading up to common management of the EU's external borders. The new Member States are expected to scrap border controls by the end of 2007, but various experts and MEPs pointed out that lifting border controls required adequate surveillance of external borders.
The draft European Parliament report on the Commission's planned EU code on the crossing of borders by individuals (see Europe No. 8713) aims to introduce more clarity and certainty to the people who will benefit from it, stressed rapporteur Michael Cashman. According to Cashman, a British Labour MEP, the first and second line controls should be carried out in a dignified and respectful manner by the frontier guards. He says a citizen from a non-EU country who is refused entry to the EU should be able to appeal and have access to sufficient information about how to go about appealing, but many Member States have not set this up, added Cashman. The reasons for refusal to grant entry should be detailed, where possible in the language of the person requesting entry, he explained. Alessandro Battilocchio (non-aligned, Italy), who will be drafting the opinion of the European Parliament's Development Committee, also suggests creating a 'standard model appeal form' for people from third countries who believe they are the victim of discrimination. On this point, Ryszard Cholewski of the University of Leicester (UK) said that frontier guards had too much room for manoeuvre and it would be a good idea to introduce an explicit reference to the principle of non-discrimination (as set out in Article 13 of the EC Treaty and Article 21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights). Jan de Ceuster, Head of Unit at the Commission, believes a specific reference of this nature is not required.
Cashman also wants the Court of Justice to be authorised to give its opinion on the full code, particularly on Member States' decisions on re-establishing temporary border controls. He wants the Commission to play a role in such decisions, but recognises that Member States are reluctant to accept Communitarisation of the procedure to trigger this. The Border Code should include a more detailed definition to distinguish between police operations and missions covered by the frontier guards' mandate, because the more fusion there is between the two, the less transparency, commented the rapporteur. Belgian Liberal Gérard Deprez agreed with the philosophy and humanity of the amendments, but said in-depth discussion was required of 'unjustified easing of the need for some types of control'. Ewa Klamt (EPP-ED/Germany) conceded that there was a grey zone between freedom and security, which had to be balanced against each other.
Specifically mentioning Annexes 2, 4, 5, 10 and 11 of the draft Code, Michael Cashman said that changing these annexes (which contain sensitive legal areas) should be subject to the legislative procedure rather than coming under comitology. The Commission seemed to agree with this approach.
In terms of the cost of managing the EU's external borders, the financial efforts of the Member States will differ according to the length of their terrestrial and maritime borders, the number of frontier posts and people actually crossing the borders, explained Jan de Ceuster, Head of Unit at the European Commission. He said the Commission wanted to institutionalise the idea of cost-sharing, and would be unveiling a shared fund on 6 April, of more than EUR 2 bn between 2007-2013.
At present, the Schengen acquis applying to the new Member States in the most recent round of enlargement only covers domains with no direct link with scrapping border controls. The actual lifting of controls should be possible by the end of 2007, but the Council will set the exact date following an assessment of all countries concerned. The 'Schengen facility' for funding the integration of the ten new Member States into the new Schengen Information System (SIS II) amounts to EUR 960 mil over three years, pointed out Jan de Ceuster, noting that at this stage, there were no specific problems for any one of these countries. Only establishing the Visa Information System (VIS) posed a few problems, but the Commission was planning to provide Member States with technical details to enable them to adapt their national visa issuing systems. Although La Valette, Ljubljana, Tallin and particularly Budapest and Warsaw remain on the cards to host the final headquarters of the EU's new Border Management Agency, Gérard Deprez urged the Council to decide where the Agency would finally be located, failing which the European Parliament would not unblock any funding at all from the 2005 budget. The new Agency is expected to be operational on 1 May this year, but in temporary headquarters in Brussels.