Effective controls at the external borders, freedom of travel without passport control inside – that is the principle of the Schengen area. In practice this does not always work. What does that mean for the future?
In the forthcoming negotiations for a reform of the rules in the Schengen area, Austria wants to ensure that temporary controls remain possible at the internal EU borders.
Such controls should also be allowed in the future “if necessary”, said Interior Minister Gerhard Karner at the European Police Congress in Berlin. The states of the Schengen area need “robust external border protection” – “so that we can also guarantee freedom of travel on our continent in the future”.
Karner also announced that the controls at Austria’s borders with Hungary and Slovenia will last at least six months. The point is to stop people-smugglers who are advertising open borders in Europe in the shadow of the Ukraine war. Germany has had controls on the border between Bavaria and Austria again since 2015. The regulation was extended until November on the instructions of Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD).
Several states use exemptions
Actually, there are no stationary identity checks at the borders in the Schengen area from 26 European countries. In recent years, however, several states have used an exception and reintroduced controls. Germany has been controlling the border with Austria since autumn 2015. At that time, tens of thousands of refugees and other migrants made their way from Greece to Western Europe via the Balkan route.
The EU Commission proposed a reform in December. It is being discussed that affected neighboring countries should be consulted in advance. According to reports, there is also a desire in the federal government for more coordination, especially on the part of the Foreign Office. So far, internal border controls have been decided by the Ministry of the Interior, usually after discussions with the federal states concerned.
ECJ: No standard controls
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled in April that states may only extend such controls in the event of “a new serious threat to their public order or their internal security”. In this specific case, it was about the practice on the border between Austria and Slovenia.
To justify the controls, Faeser referred to a “fragile situation on the Turkish-Greek border, illegal migration potential along the Balkan route and via the Central Mediterranean route”, as well as “considerable illegal secondary migration”. This emerges from a response from the federal government to a question from the left-wing faction’s refugee policy spokeswoman, Clara Bünger. The examination of possible effects of the judgment of the ECJ is still ongoing.
Bünger pleaded for an immediate end to these controls. “If the federal government is concerned with preventing unwanted onward migration of refugees in the EU, then it should work for a fair and solidarity-based EU asylum system.” She couldn’t understand why Faeser was sticking to “the politics and erroneous legal opinion” of her predecessor Horst Seehofer (CSU).
Source: Stern
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