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FT.com / Brussels - France and Italy seek Schengen changes
FT.com / Brussels - France and Italy seek Schengen changes
France and Italy seek Schengen changes
By Peggy Hollinger in Paris and Guy Dinmore in Rome
Published: April 23 2011
France and Italy are working on a joint proposal to revise elements of the Schengen treaty, which allows free movement across borders of EU states, in response to tensions over an influx of Tunisian migrants.
Officials in Paris and Rome said on Friday that the proposals under discussion focused on broadening the mechanism that allows states to temporarily suspend their Schengen commitments. These would be discussed by Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, and Silvio Berlusconi, Italian prime minister, at their meeting in the Italian capital on Tuesday.
France and Italy have been openly at odds over the arrival on Italian shores of thousands of illegal immigrants in the wake of the Arab uprisings across north Africa.
Italy has started issuing temporary residence permits to some of the more than 25,000 Tunisians who have arrived by boat, arguing that with these papers they are free to move within Europe. France, however, has set up controls on its border and returned hundreds of mostly French-speaking Tunisians trying to leave Italy to join relatives in France.
Talks in advance of next week’s bilateral summit failed to resolve the dispute, but the two sides are trying to find common ground in revising Schengen, diplomats said. “We are trying to find a common position to put to Europe,” said an Italian official.
Mr Sarkozy’s government has taken an increasingly tough stance on immigration – most recently cutting back sharply the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country – in a bid to fend off a growing threat from the extreme right as next year’s presidential election nears.
With his popularity at record lows, and voters sorely disillusioned by persistently high unemployment, Mr Sarkozy is hoping that a focus on immigration and security will revitalise his chances in 2012.
Mr Berlusconi is in a similar bind, with pressure coming from his hardline coalition allies in the Northern League who failed in their initial bid to deport the illegal migrants straight back to Tunisia.
Senior advisers to Mr Sarkozy said the crisis with Italy had revealed severe weaknesses in the Schengen treaty, which was shown to be incapable of dealing with pressure on Europe’s external borders. Europe needed to increase coordination on immigration, just as it had done on the common currency, one presidential official said.
“Just as the euro was under pressure from the markets, Schengen is under pressure from immigration,” the official said.
The Schengen treaty already provides for a special mechanism to reimpose border controls under special circumstances, including major international summits and events, such as the football World Cup hosted by Germany in 2006.
France is also proposing a European fund to help a member state facing such problems, and will argue that Frontex, the agency charged with monitoring the region’s external borders, should be reinforced.
“We need to reflect on how to organise Schengen more efficiently,” the presidential adviser said. “If we don’t then the survival of Schengen itself could be in question.”
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Way to undue in weeks the work of several years of European integration. Awesome.
Destroying Europe: Italy issues passports willy-nilly to North Africans...
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