Thread: Denmark reintroduce border controls ahead of Schengen meetin

Denmark announces decision to reintroduce border controls ahead of Schengen meeting

Denmark is to reintroduce controls at its EU borders with Germany and Sweden in an attempt to curb crime and illegal immigration, ahead of today's [Thu] meeting in Brussels that will discuss the visa-free Schengen zone.



By Our Foreign Staff 7:43PM BST 11 May 2011

The new controls will come into force within two to three weeks, according to Claus Hjort Frederiksen, the finance minister.

Because Denmark is a member of Europe's visa-free Schengen area, it cannot reinstate full frontier controls, and will still follow European Union rules with its current plan to station customs officers permanently at borders to conduct random checks on vehicles.

"Everything will take place within the limits of Schengen," the minister said.

"Over the past few years we have seen an increase in trans-border crime, and this is designed to curb the problem. We will be building new facilities at the Danish-German border, with new electronic equipment and number-plate identifiers," he said.

The minister added Denmark wanted Danish customs officers to be permanently present at the Oeresund Bridge that links Denmark and Sweden.

Passport-free travel across the 'Schengen' area, which does not include Britain or Ireland, has come under unprecedented pressure after Italy gave residence permits to more than 25,000 Arabs last month, allowing them unfettered access to the rest of the EU.

The European Commission was last week forced to propose the reintroduction of temporary passport controls as "under very exception circumstances" after a conflict between France and Italy threatened to destroy the border-free zone.

France, the most likely destination of the mainly French-speaking Tunisian immigrants, prompted the row by temporarily closing a key railway frontier with Italy and introduced tough extra checks of immigrants' papers.

The idea of controls at borders in Denmark was pressed by the far-right Danish People's Party and its head Pia Kjaersgaard, who argued that it would counter illegal immigration and organised crime. The People's Party has been a key ally of the centre-right government since 2001.

EU interior ministers will today [Thu] meet in Brussels to debate proposals for restoring temporary border controls within the visa-free zone.

Denmark thus went ahead with tighter border controls before a possible EU decision on the matter.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... eting.html

Europe forced to propose passport controls in Schengen zone

The European Commission has been forced to propose the reintroduction of passport controls as 'a last resort' after a conflict over Tunisian immigrants between France and Italy threatened to destroy the EU's border-free zone.


Migrants from North Africa, who hold temporary travel documents issued by Italy, in a park in Paris Photo: REUTERS

By Bruno Waterfield, Brussels 7:00PM BST 04 May 2011

Passport-free travel across the "Schengen" area, which does not include Britain or Ireland, has come under unprecedented pressure after Italy last month gave residence permits to over 25,000 Arab migrants allowing them unfettered access to rest of the EU.

France, the likely destination of the mainly French-speaking Tunisian immigrants, responded by temporarily closing a key railway frontier with Italy and by introducing tough extra checks for papers on immigrants.

"It may be necessary to foresee the temporary reintroduction of limited internal border controls under very exceptional circumstances," said Cecilia Malmstroem, the EU's internal affairs commissioner.

"The European Commission feels it should be a community mechanism not unilateral and there should be very clear conditions."

The Swedish commissioner insisted that even though border controls might be temporarily coming back to deal with an wave of immigrants from North Africa, it would not become the norm over the next few years.

"The free movement of people across European borders is a major achievement which must not be reversed," she insisted.

The proposals will be submitted to an emergency meeting of EU interior ministers on May 12 before what are expected to be bad tempered discussions on immigration between European leaders at a Brussels summit on June 24.

EU governments are unlikely to agree to the commission's rethink because it will give Brussels the power to decide which circumstances are "exceptional", removing the decision to reintroduce border controls from national capitals.

The proposals suggest that the EU should step in "to handle situations where either a member state is not fulfilling its obligations to control its section of the external border, or where a particular portion of the external border comes under unexpected and heavy pressure due to external events".

"We are seeing exceptional events across the Mediterranean," said the commissioner.

But Mrs Malmstroem on Wednesday refused to say whether the influx of Arabs into Italy, following political unrest in Tunisia and Libya, would trigger special measures.

The police in Norway, a member of the Schengen zone even though it is not an EU member, on Wednesday complained that passport-free travel had led to a crime wave in Nordic countries.

"Open borders in Europe have led to a situation where 80 per cent of crimes committed in Norway and other Nordic states are carried out by criminals who are either from the Baltic states or are strongly linked to the organised crime in the Baltic states," said Egil Haaland, the president of the Norwegian police association.

"Open borders have became a big problem for us."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -zone.html

May all nations who wish to preserve their own culture, customs, language(s) and people be protected against the evil forces that would force them to do otherwise.