Freedom inside, control outside
EU wants to secure Schengen through border protection
2/3/2022, 8:44 p.m
The Schengen area is one of the most important achievements of the European Union: Citizens of the member states enjoy the freedom to travel across borders. In order to continue to ensure this, the interior ministers of the member states apparently want to seal the EU’s external borders.
At the suggestion of France, the interior ministers of the 26 Schengen countries want to meet regularly in the future and, above all, discuss how to deal with crises. The so-called “Schengen Council” is to meet for the first time on March 3, said French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin after an informal meeting with his EU colleagues in Lille.
In the Schengen area, which includes 22 EU countries and 4 other European countries, there are usually no stationary border controls. In recent years, however, Germany, France and other countries have reintroduced some controls. They justified this, among other things, with the danger of terrorism and with the fact that asylum seekers move from one country to the next without permission. Even during the corona pandemic, several countries introduced controls at the borders or closed the borders completely.
The core of Schengen – freedom of movement – is being damaged more and more as a result. The EU Commission therefore presented a proposal for a Schengen reform at the end of last year. This should make border controls an exception again. French President Emmanuel Macron has also recently advocated rapid reform.
Belarus crisis forces action
On Wednesday evening, among other things, he called for stronger controls at the external borders so that freedom of movement inside can be restored. He also wants to rely on the systematic control of arriving migrants. In this way, possible criminals should also be fished out. He also wants to accelerate the repatriation of people without a residence permit to their home countries.
He also proposed the “Schengen Council”, which should regularly deal with the problems at the political level. These could be, for example, high pressure on the external borders, as in the case of the Belarus crisis, a threat of terrorism, or a health crisis such as the Covid 19 pandemic. Marcon drew a parallel with the Eurogroup, in which the EU countries with the euro as their currency meet regularly.