LUXEMBOURG, June 7: European Union nations agreed Thursday they can temporarily restore border checks within the visa-free Schengen area in case of a surge of illegal migrants, despite opposition from Brussels.
Officials from Denmark, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, said home affairs ministers from the 27-nation bloc had unanimously agreed to the move.
“Disappointed by lack of European ambition among member states”, said the EU's home affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem, who opposed the move.
The agreement will enable the 26 countries in the travel-free Schengen area to restore border controls for up to a year under “exceptional circumstances”.
Those circumstances, according to demands made by France and Germany earlier this year, are problems related to illegal immigration, which has emerged as one of Europe's most sensitive political issues amid the debt crisis, slow growth and mounting unemployment.
Going into the talks, Malmstroem had said: “We cannot accept what is on the table today.”
She has repeatedly argued that Schengen was never designed to control migration but to ease freedom of movement.
The EU's Frontex agency that mans borders said in a report that registered illegal crossings on the outer borders of the Schengen area shot up by 35 per cent in 2011.
Numbers rose from 104,000 in 2010 to 141,000 the following year, largely due to flows across the Mediterranean from the Arab Spring upheavals.
But the second biggest hot-spot was the border between Greece and Turkey, which saw 55,000 detections last year.
With low-cost flights to Turkey on the increase as war, chaos and poverty send people fleeing hot-spots from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Somalia, the flow is forecast to increase.
Responding to the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, France and Germany in April sent Schengen counterparts a joint letter calling for drastic change.
But that was before the May election of socialist President Francois Hollande, who stepped into the shoes of conservative Nicolas Sarkozy.
The new French Interior Minister Manuel Valls made no statement on arriving for the talks, but was in a tight spot. Should he have rejected the previous government's stand, his Socialist party would face the ire of the right just as the country heads into parliamentary electionsJune 10 and 17.
Sarkozy, chasing the far-right vote, had threatened to pull out of the Schengen zone within a year failing improved action to keep out illegal migrants.
Currently, the Schengen treaty allows renewal of border controls in the case of a terror or security threat thrown up by sports or other events.
But the draft approved by the ministers would allow a state within the Schengen area to re-impose border controls for six months, renewable for another six “when the control of an external border is no longer ensured due to exceptional circumstances”.
France exercised that option last year, temporarily closing its border with Italy when the Arab Spring revolts threw thousands across the Mediterranean into Italy and Greece.—AFP